Long Road Out of Eden
by Beloved-Stranger
Summary: Jump the Shark AU. A song Dean didn't know played softly. At the front of the church a projector poured pictures from Kate Milligan's life across a screen; a child, a teenager, a mother full of love and secrets, her arms around her green-eyed daughter...
1. Teaser: Somebody Whispering

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Supernatural. If I did, I wouldn't be killing off every recurring female character left, right and centre. Ahem.

**Author's Note:** 'Jump the Shark' pissed me off. I'm pretty sure it pissed just about everybody off, but probably not for the same reasons it pissed me off. I thought it was cruel…so of course I had a go at fixing it. This has been eating at me for awhile now, and as much as I love Peggy over in the Clothesline 'verse, I feel like this needs my attention more at the moment.

It was either write or experience a muse-induced lobotomy. I'm not kidding, she was standing there smiling and holding a cattle-prod. You try arguing with that!

* * *

**Teaser: Somebody Whispering**

**Broken Bow, Nebraska  
January, 1992**

When Sam was small, maybe eight or so, he saw a guy on a cable TV show who could bend spoons with his brain.

He remembered this very vividly, because it came maybe a month after he found out what his father really did for a living.

Monsters were real, _everything was real_, Dean had said. Dad was a superhero…

"Dean," he called over the back of the couch to where Dean was sitting on his bed.

His brother looked up, glowering. Dean was doing homework, for once, and it was making him no fun to be around.

"What?" was the snapped reply.

Sam pointed at the screen, where the bald spoon-bender was lining up for another shot, his eyes huge, fingers to his bare temples. The on-screen spoon wobbled and bent nearly in half.

"Can people really do that?"

Dean snorted, "What? Of course not."

"How do you know?" Sam demanded hotly.

"Can you bend spoons with the power of your tiny brain?"

"No…but – but I can't do that think where you drink milk with your nose and squirt it out your eye."

"Yeah, so?" Dean could, you see, it was a point of pride that everywhere they went, he was the only kid who could squirt milk out of his eye. Couldn't do juice though; he'd tried that and it had stung for _hours_.

"So," Sam continued earnest now, "I can't do it, but someone else somewhere might be able to. Like, special people, or something."

He watched his brother's face. Dean had his brows knitted in thought now. They both watched the screen as a third spoon wobbled and fell back.

"I guess so," Dean said slowly. "Dad said he went to see a psychic once."

"Really? What did he say about it?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Nothing. Just that he went to see a psychic once."

"Oh."

A few minutes later…

"Dean?"

"What?"

"Do you think we'll ever meet someone who can do that?"

"I hope not," Dean said dryly, still half-heartedly working on his math. He _hated_ math…

"Why?"

Dean snorted incredulously. "Oh, come on, Sam, what kind of a lame superpower is _spoon-bending_?"

* * *

**Windom, Minnesota  
April, 1994**

When Evie was small, maybe four or so, she saw a guy on a cable TV show who could bend spoons with his brain.

Tiny, impressionable Evie watched with awe and delight, and then thought, _I can do that!_

It never occurred to her as she pulled open the draw containing her mother's best silverware that bending a spoon – or any piece of cutlery for that matter – should be impossible.

Keyword: _should_.

Evie held the spoon by its handle with both little fists and stared hard at her own concave reflection in the spoon's face.

_Bend_, she thought.

The spoon did not oblige.

_Bend!_ she thought again, a little more aggressively.

The spoon remained uncooperative.

Not the most patient of children, but certainly stubborn, Evie began to get angry.

_BEND!_ she commanded, scowling fiercely and stamping one small foot, as though getting ready to throw one truly epic wobbly.

The spoon reacted as through it had taken a blow from a hammer.

Evie blinked, a little surprised, and studied the spoon, its face now pointed away from her, the handle bent into a perfect L-shape.

"I did it," she said, then smiled.

She tossed the bent spoon down and retrieved another one.

"Mommy!" she cried, dashing to the laundry room. "Mommy, look what I can do!"

* * *

**Madison, Wisconsin  
April, 2009**

The first inkling that something was wrong was the call from Joe Barton.

Evie had been in the middle of a biochem lecture when her phone went off, filling the lecture hall with the wailing strains of MGMT's 'Electric Eel'. Feeling like her face might just burn off with shame, she grabbed her bag and dashed for the hallway, only opening her Nokia once she was safely hidden from accusing faces in the nearest girls' bathroom.

"Yes?"

"Is this Eve Milligan?"

"Yeah…can I ask whose calling?"

"Sure. I'm Joe Barton, Eve; I'm a friend of your mother's."

_Oh, really?_

Cliché as it was, she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise in silent warning. She and her mother were close, seeing as how for years it had just been the two of them. She was reasonably sure she knew all her mother's friends, even the distant ones. She didn't remember Mom ever mentioning a Joe Barton.

The clincher was her name. No one ever called her Eve except when they were reading off an official record. Her mother had always introduced her as Evie, ever since she was little.

What was going on here?

"I'm just calling because I think you should hear this from me rather than from a stranger," he was saying. There was a heavy sigh. "Eve, you're mother is missing."

* * *

**Windom, Minnesota**

The house was quiet when she got home.

_Empty_, she thought, _like when Mom's on a shift…_

It hurt to think about it.

Worn out from the six hour drive from Madison, she stumbled towards the kitchen, thinking only of the chocolate stashed in the cupboard over the fridge. Comfort food wouldn't really improve the situation, but it would make her feel better for awhile, and it was better than heading for the vodka kept at the back of the china cabinet.

It was then that they jumped her.

She barely had time to scream.

* * *

**AN2:** So…there you have it. Let me know how you feel about it?


	2. One: Pilgrim, Prodigal

**One: Pilgrim, Prodigal**

**Beside a Lake Two Hours from Anything, Minnesota  
April, 2009**

It was just not his morning.

Sleeping in the car was never fun, and with the iffy spring weather this far north, it was beyond uncomfortable.

Sam was already up when he very nearly fell out of the driver's door, stomach immediately making it presence felt. Two hours from anything did nothing for his temper – after all, he was hungry _now_ – the tuna sandwich of doom did nothing to sway his appetite, and cracking his head when retrieving Dad's persistently ringing phone only notched up the headache that began with sleeping with his head against a window.

However, all this ceased to matter after the conversation that followed.

"Hello?" he muttered.

"Is – is John there please?" a girl's voice answered. She sounded nervous, breath rushing and hitching. Dean pictured her pacing and biting her nails.

"Sorry, he can't come to the phone right now," he told her, "Can I help you?"

"No, no, I'm sorry, but I really need to speak John. My name is Evie, Evie Milligan; he knows me and…it's very important. He needs to know this."

She was getting more and more nervy by the second, Dean could hear it. Time to put her out of her misery.

"Look, darlin', I'm really sorry to have to tell you this but John died. More that two years ago."

He heard her breath hitch hard, making a small pained sound in her throat. _Oh no_, he thought, _oh, please don't cry_.

That was all he needed; he really, _really_ wasn't good at the whole comforting weeping females thing. He could usually get by with patting on the back and the whole 'there, there' routine, but over the phone? Forget it.

Unfortunately, this was evidently someone who had known Dad, enough to grieve at news of his death. Dean felt for her, really he did, but the fact remained;

Weeping female + phone + Dean = worse than useless.

He was tempted to simply mumble an apology and hand the phone over to Sam, who was, you know, good at that sort of thing.

But when he looked over at his brother…that wasn't happening. Evidently, the volume was up loud enough to Sam's keen ears to pick out her side of the conversation, and now the crying. Sam was bitchfacing him.

"Well done," his brother mouthed. "It's not even ten."

Dean scowled back at Lord High and Mighty Who Doesn't Make Girls Cry Before Breakfast and tried to figure out what to say.

"Um, look, I'm real sorry, I am, but…"

"You don't understand," she cut him off, and Dean realized for the first time that this girl wasn't nervous she was _terrified_. "I've got no one else to turn to."

He felt telltale dread pool in his empty stomach. "What do you mean?"

"He was my dad," she told him brokenly. "I'm his daughter."

**

* * *

Windom**

It took exactly twenty minutes for Dean's brain to reboot and start scrambling for answers, the most obvious of which (to him at least) was that this was a trap.

Sam was not so sure.

In the four hours it took them to get to the diner in Windom, Sam balanced his laptop on his knee and scraped around on what wireless service he could get looking for a girl called Evie Milligan.

He found her on a high school website; an article in the alumni section detailing her scholarship at the University of Wisconsin and the past achievements that had led her there; first place science fair projects, top of her biology classes several years in a row and graduating with honors.

She was a bright kid…

From there it was a matter of a few well places calls – watching cautiously all the while as Dean's left eye ticked – and he was emailed photocopies of her birth certificate and school transcripts, told anecdotes of her short-lived ballet career as a child, given stories of the teenager that sat in the ER waiting room for her mother to finish her shift…

…and how wasn't it a shame that poor Kate had been left to raise such a sweet girl all alone?

He didn't tell Dean that last part.

Mentally holding his breath, he checked their father's journal as well.

And there it was; 'January 1990, heading to Minnesota. Checking out a case. Left the boys with Jim; Sam still has a head cold.' The following two pages had been ripped out. Rather forcefully.

Eve Linette Milligan had arrived in the world nine months later.

This was all conspiring to paint a very illustrative picture, one that Dean was refusing to see.

He was still refusing to see it when they pulled up at Cousin Oliver's.

"Dean, would you just –" Sam began, only to be cut off by Dean scrabbling out of the car and slamming his door shut. Sam sighed, and followed him, trying again. "Dean, seriously man, listen for a second."

Dean glowered, and continued digging around in the trunk.

Sam plowed on. "Look, as far as I can tell, the kid checks out…" He listed off a cliff notes version of what he'd found, leaving off some of the anecdotal stuff.

"Good for you," Dean said, straightening and slamming the trunk too. "Still a trap."

And off he strode.

Sam sighed, scrubbed one hand over his face and followed him again.

Inside the diner, things did not improve. Dean gave the interior a suspicious, sweeping stare, and then headed for one of the back tables. The girl behind the counter flicked them a curious glance when Dean started rearranging the seating, and Sam tried to send her a reassuring smile. The same girl came over to give them water and menus, and Sam's smile did very little to keep her from getting angry and stalking off when Dean was – and there was no other way to put it – rude.

"Great," Sam was unable to help muttering, "Now I'll never get fed."

Dean's outrage would have been funny in any other situation. "How can you still be thinking of food at a time like this?"

Sam wanted to laugh, so badly, because it was exactly the sort of thing he'd said to Dean so many times before. The irony…

"Because I'm hungry," Sam snapped back at him, "and tired, and not the only one who's freaked out here. But the fact remains; Eve Milligan is an actual person – what the hell are you doing?"

Dean had snagged one of the water glasses, emptied it into the potted plant behind them and…_oh for the love of_…was now filling the glass with holy water.

"So the kid's real. Whoo-freaking-hoo. Shame she's got a demon riding her."

"You can't be serious."

"As a heart attack. One sip of Jesus-juice…" He set the glass back on the table. "…and Little Miss Dark Eyes will meet my good friend Pain."

Sam felt another sigh coming on. "Dean, has it occurred to you that demons possess existing people? Even if she has got something evil living wearing her as a meat-suit, the girl inside is still going to be Evie Milligan, who chances are, is still going to be our –"

"Shapeshifter then." And out came the silver cutlery.

This was getting old.

"Same problem; shapeshifters take on the forms of _actual people_. So, again, even if we don't meet Evie _here_, she's somewhere else, probably college, unaware something is walking around using her face and tapping her brain for her history."

Dean's eye was beginning to tick again. Sam continued on relentlessly.

"And, again, the facts still stand. Dad was here in January of nineteen-ninety on a case. Nine months before Evie was born, Dean."

His brother finally turned to look at him, and for a split second, Sam could have sworn there was fear there.

Then it was gone and there was just anger; the sort of stony anger Sam remembered seeing whenever someone bad-mouthed their dad to Dean's face – when Sam had done so himself – most recently when Hendrickson had talked about Dad, speculating on their childhood as if he had the right to. Dean had put up a good front then, playing the cocky cowboy to the last, but Sam had sensed it there, seen it, swimming beneath the surface of his brother's face like a shark under dark water.

He really hoped Dean wasn't right about this. He really hoped that anger wasn't going to have a reason to surface. Because despite the things he'd said, despite the believe that something had been broken in Dean down in hell, Sam was still scared of his brother's anger, still scared of the way he might one day use it.

Dean went to say something, got as far as a low, bad-tempered, "Sam…" before the chime at the diner's door went, and someone stepped inside.

It was a girl.

Sam noted the loose jeans, grey cardigan and blue messenger bag.

"Evie?" he called out.

She turned then, and Sam felt Dean tense beside them when both brothers laid eyes on her face.

Without realizing what he was doing, Sam studied her, quietly picking out features he recognized. They weren't obvious at first – or perhaps it was just finding them in the unfamiliar formatting of a female face – but they _were_ there. Her hair was the same brown as his and Dean's, though that was neither here nor there, but it fell the same way Sam's always had. She had Dad's mouth, like Dean did, and as she slowly made her way over to them, Sam saw that she had his eyes too; that same Winchester green he saw in the mirror each morning.

Beyond those rather arresting features, Sam began to notice other things; the mauve smudges underscoring her eyes, the pale, drawn look, and the careful way she limped to her seat opposite them, bracing herself on the chair's back before lowering herself down.

"Sam and Dean, right?" she murmured.

Dean, stone faced, did not deign to speak, so it was left to Sam to say, "Yeah, hi."

She took a breath, gathering herself and asked, "Um…so, how did you know my dad?"

"We worked with him," Sam said honestly.

She nodded. "Okay. I – I hate to ask but, do you know how he –" she swallowed, "– how he died?"

"On the job," Sam blurted. Also true…

…but apparently not the right thing to say. Evie stared at him, disbelieving. "But…he was a mechanic."

"A car fell on him," Dean said, speaking for the first time.

Sam wished he hadn't.

Evie stared at Dean now, uttering a soft, startled, "what?" just as the waitress approached again.

"Hey, Evie, long time no see, sweetie."

Sam watched her manage a small smile. "Hi, Denise."

"Your usual?"

"Yeah…no, um, is there pie?"

Dean's face went blank.

Denise nodded. "Sure, what kind?"

"Chocolate cream?"

"Coming right up."

And off she went, before Sam could get an order in edgeways. His stomach rumbled mournfully.

Evie's mouth curled up in the beginnings of a genuine smile. "Want me to call her back?"

"No," he said sadly, "I'm fine."

"Uh-huh." She clearly didn't believe him.

Then she reached for the water glass. Dean was practically a live wire beside him. The pair of them watched as she took a small sip, set down the glass and then dipped her middle finger in it, circling the rim the same way one might to make a wine glass sing.

No sizzling, no sputtering, no black eyes.

No demon.

_Aha!_ Thought Sam, and then felt faintly ridiculous. Clearing his throat he asked, "So, when did you last see…John?"

She looked up at him – those terribly familiar eyes – and shrugged a little. "Years ago. Around October oh-five, I think. He taught me to drive that summer before, in that big black muscle car…got me a charm for my bracelet when I got my license." She frowned. "After that, I don't know, he just dropped off the face of the planet, no calls, no nothing."

October, 2005. Sam remembered. Dad had taken off after Azazel, leaving the Impala with Dean. Jess had died that month. Sam had started down the road that had brought him here. Everything had changed, and not just for them, it seemed. Dad had left Evie hanging too.

"I think…I think the very last I heard from him was…I got a package in the mail, around July the following year – another charm only…" she trailed off, expression chagrinned.

"Only what?" Dean asked. Sam figured he was curious despite himself.

"Only it was a little weird," she said. They watched as she pulled up the left-hand sleeve of her cardigan. There was silver charm bracelet on her wrist.

Silver. Not any kind of shapeshifter either, then.

Evie Milligan was the real deal.

Sam really hoped Dean wasn't going to have another heart attack.

While his brother breathed roughly through his nose, Sam inspected the bracelet, spotting a pair of wings, a capital W and an electric guitar…but there was also a little silver revolver and a tiny car that bore a striking resemblance to the Impala. The charm Evie held out to show them though, was a small silver bible, no bigger than a thumbnail.

"He never struck me as religious," she continued. "He wore his dog-tags once, when he came to see me, and they listed him as _non_-religious, so…it was really weird when he sent me this."

"Was there a note, or a letter…?"

She shook her head. "Not really. Just a tag on the box. 'To Evie, stay safe, love Dad.' That was it."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "'Stay safe,'?"

She practically shrank. "Well, see, I was kinda short, at fifteen, and the Impala, my dad's car, was clearly built for someone a lot taller…"

_Not good._

Dean was puffing up like an enraged porcupine and opening his mouth, probably to shout.

It was at that point that Evie's pie arrived. It looked _amazing_.

Sam was _so_ hungry.

His stomach rumbled in protest. Evie gave him a small smile and nudged the plate so it sat between them.

"Have some."

Was she serious? "Really?"

"Yeah, I ate before I came here. This is just…" she sighed, "comfort food."

Both of them dug in, and for a minute or so conversation fell by the wayside. The pie looked amazing, and it tasted better. Sam's taste buds were _waltzing_.

Of course that could just be hysterical relief talking.

Then Dean decided to talk again. He really, really wasn't taking this well.

"So," he said, broadcasting aggression, "what made you decide to call John, after all these years? You sounded pretty messed up on the phone."

She paused, fork hovering over the plate. Sam winced.

"I didn't know who else to call," she said quietly. "I mean, right now he's the only family I've got left." At Sam's enquiring look she added, "I'm only back in Windom 'cause…I got a call yesterday, from this guy claiming to be a friend of my mom's. He told me she was missing. When I talked to the guys at the local police department they confirmed it."

"I'm sorry," Sam told her sincerely.

Dean apparently wasn't. "Yeah, that's real tragic. But see what I don't get is that if you're really John's kid, why didn't we know about you?"

Evie looked perplexed. "Uh…were you…close? To Dad?"

"Yeah, real close."

"We worked with him for a long time, Evie," Sam added, in case she got, you know, _the wrong impression_. "Since we were teenagers."

"Guy was practically family," Dean said, still really fricking cranky.

"Oh," said Evie. "Well, I mean, I only met him when I was twelve. Mom didn't talk about him much, but…it always really bugged me, having to say I didn't know my dad when people asked, or not have anyone to give a card to when we made them in school, for father's day and stuff. I just begged her, for _weeks_, and she finally caved and called him."

She gave them another of those small smiles.

"Next thing I know there's this huge black car in our driveway and a bearded guy who looks like he slept in his clothes standing on the doorstep saying 'Hi, I'm your Dad.'"

"Heart-warming," Dean deadpanned.

Evie turned to look at him, eyes narrowing. Sam felt a few internal warning bells go off. Dean might be pissed himself, but he was also starting to piss her off.

"Yeah, well…I didn't get to see him that often. His work took him all 'round, but I guess you guys know that. I saw him maybe twice, three times a year." She gave a small laugh, face full of nostalgia. "He really had no idea what to do with a girl. I think it might have been easier for him if I was a boy, y'know? He tried to teach me poker and pool –"

The explosion Sam had been waiting for finally arrived. Dean's voice was low but potent.

"This is bullshit."

Evie watched him with rapidly cooling eyes. When she spoke her voice was a whip-crack of fragile edges. "I'm sorry; do you have some kind of problem? Because you've been trying to drill holes in me since the moment I sat down."

"You're damn right I've got a problem," Dean snapped. "This whole 'John Winchester is my absent father' routine? Its bullshit and I'm not going to listen to it. You? You can't be John's kid, know why? Because _we'r_e his kids, and he would have told us if we had a sibling!"

Evie froze, face draining of colour and going alarmingly blank. Her gaze switched back and forth between a cringing Sam and spitting mad Dean.

"Brothers," she said haltingly. "I…I have brothers."

Then she began to hyperventilate.

"Can't breathe," she managed, and staggered to her feet, limping rapidly for the door.

Enraged, Dean shot up and took off after her, barking, "Hey! I'm not done with you!"

Sam got up to follow the pair of them, only to find his way blocked by Denise the Less Than Impressed Waitress.

"Where do you think you're going?" she said tartly, raised one eyebrow.

"Uh, out there…?"

"No you're not."

"I'm not?"

"Nope."

"Um, why?"

"Well someone's gotta pay for the pie."

_Crap._

**

* * *

AN:** I'm officially requesting critique. It's easier with an episode to work off as a guide, but the boys' characterization has always given me problems, especially Dean, which is a shame because he's adorable. Let me know how I'm doing?


	3. Two: Aches Inside

**Author's Note:** Big love to my reviewers, abby, enid and whereinthewrld. You guys made my day. Cuddles to everyone who hit the story alert button…but I'm still holding out for a critique, lol.

Also, something to keep in mind – though their histories and stories are similar, Evie is not Adam in female form. More on that later. For now, enjoy…

**

* * *

Two: Aches Inside**

For all that she could work up a good clip despite the limp, she hadn't gone very far.

Dean found her in the parking lot, five feet from the car, staring at it with this…really awful, broken look on her face.

And she was crying again.

_Well…shit._

Dean floundered. He'd been gearing up for a really good shouting match…and now his opponent had disappeared and left behind the same falling-to-frightened-pieces girl he'd spoken to this morning. At least this time it wasn't all happening over a phone line, but after what had happened minutes ago in the diner, Dean doubted he was going to get away with patting her back and saying, 'there, there.'

He felt the moment the fight went out of him. It was like someone pulling a plug on a sink full of boiling water; quick to anger, quick to quiet. Sam was the one capable of carrying a grudge for days, weeks, months, _years_ on end. He and Dad were so alike in that way. Dean…Dean could follow through on a cause, but keeping that kind of rage burning for so long…he'd burn up before it did.

He sighed silently, reaching round to rub the back of his neck.

Sam might actually have been right.

_Again, shit._

Goddamned Dad and his secrets… In some ways Dean could almost see it, see why he had done it. There was some of the old double standard about sons and daughters here; boys could take care of themselves, but little girls were to be put in chastity belts, kept in ivory towers and only let out when they hit thirty. Evie must have sent their Dad's natural protective instincts off the deep end.

And still; it was just too big, too big a thing for him to have kept from them.

He slowly strode over to where Evie was standing, still gazing hopelessly at the Impala.

"That's Dad's car," she said weakly.

"Yeah," Dean replied, voice gruff as he regarded his boots, hands shoved in his pockets. "He gave it to me, maybe three months after…after he taught you to drive in it."

Her breath hitched again, like he remembered it doing over the phone that morning. "He – he's really gone, huh?"

"Yeah…" Time to take his lumps. "Look, Evie, I'm sorry, this isn't your fault. I shouldn't have gone off at you." He scrubbed his hands over his face. "Its not you I'm angry with."

She gave a short, bitter laugh. "Yes it is. I'm probably the dirty little secret that got your folks divorced or something."

"No. No, it wasn't like that. Dad was a widower, Evie. For years. There was a house fire when Sam was six months…"

"Oh," she said very quietly. And then a few seconds later, with a frown, "ow."

She looked down, and Dean followed her gaze. Behind then, they heard the bell go as Sam emerged from the diner but neither of them looked up.

There was a red stain showing through the ankle of Evie's jeans, rivulets running over her shoes.

"I must have torn something," she said faintly.

Dean caught her shoulders when she started swaying. Her face was white.

"Evie, what the hell…?" The fear was back in her eyes. "What the hell is going on? What are you so afraid of?"

She swallowed hard, eyes filling up again. "You'll think I'm crazy," she whispered.

"Try me."

Something in his expression must have gotten across to her. She took a breath, holding back the tears.

"I went home after I talked to the cops. Something was waiting for me. It – it jumped me, and it bit me…

"And it looked just like my mom."

* * *

They'd managed to pour Evie into the backseat with a towel wrapped around her calf. From there she'd guided them to Kelsey Manor, the hotel where she was staying.

"I can't go back to the house," she'd muttered. "Mom's not there; it doesn't feel like home."

They'd helped her inside and Sam had gotten the med kit out of the car.

Even Dean was appalled when Evie pulled up the leg of her jeans and let Sam peel off the bandage underneath.

The skin had been ripped in a long strip, two inches wide, from and inch below her knee to where it thinned and finally tore loose over her anklebone. At the top of it, a set of teeth marks were clearly visible.

"They had to treat it like a burn," she said quietly. "Because of all the exposed subcutaneous tissue…there was some talk of skin grafts…"

Sam felt his insides curdle. "It's going to scar?"

"Yeah."

Of course it would; she'd be growing a whole new piece of skin.

Dean's eyes had narrowed. "You weren't supposed to leave the hospital." It was more statement than question. "Not with a wound that bad."

Evie looked shamefaced, but determined. "It was about Dad. I couldn't just lie around not knowing what had happened to him."

"We could've come to see you if you'd told us, Evie."

"I…" She looked down, face flushing. "I don't think I was thinking that clearly."

Sam began laying out what he'd need for a new dressing. "Will you be okay?"

She nodded. "If I don't try to run again. I've got pain meds and antibiotics to prevent infection."

"You shouldn't even be walking," Dean said, clearly still unhappy with the situation. Sam wasn't terribly impressed himself but until they could convince Evie that they had things under control he had a feeling she wasn't going to budge, let alone agree to go back to hospital.

Evie nodded again, head still down. "I know. I'll be good from now on, I swear." She peeked at Dean from under her bangs, and Sam smothered a grin. "Scout's honor."

"I'm holding you to that, kiddo."

While Sam carefully redressed the ugly wound, Dean sat at the small dining table and began asking the questions they'd held off on during the drive to the hotel.

"What can you tell us about the thing that jumped you?"

Her hands were shaking. Sam watched her grip the bedspread and steady herself.

"There were two of them," she began. "One…one I didn't know. It looked like some average white guy with dorky square glasses. It kind of made it worse when he smiled. The other one, the one that grabbed me, looked like my mom."

That bitter little laugh.

"For a second there, like a split second, I thought it was this big prank…then I hit the floor and it hurt… They grabbed me once I was down, and the female reared back, you know, the way a snake does, and then bit my leg. I kicked and…I had no idea skin could rip like that. Like it was wet paper. It even sounded like it."

"What made you realize?"

"Realize what?"

Dean cast him a look. Now of never, prepare for liftoff. The veil was about to be torn through.

"That they weren't human," Dean said.

Evie swayed.

"Whoa!"

Both of them reached forward and caught a shoulder.

"Hey, kiddo, you okay?"

"Yeah," she breathed. "I think I was just waiting for someone to say it out loud. It wasn't real in my head." She took a breath. "I knew when…when the smell hit me."

Dean frowned. "The smell?"

"Yeah, they smelt like…oh God, like a goddamned mortuary. Like an embalming room."

_Holy…_

Sam looked up from binding her leg, eyes wide. Dean sat back in his chair, surprise filling his face.

"Okay, that's…really freaking disturbing. And how in the _hell_ do you know what an embalming room smells like?"

"Um, my granddad died when I was eight or so. Mom went to view the body and couldn't find a sitter. The receptionist at the funeral home said she'd watch me and then didn't. I wandered off…one of the technicians had gone for a smoke and left the wrong door open. I went in and the place just _reeked_."

"Formaldehyde, right?" Sam asked.

Evie nodded, swallowing. He was a little worried she'd be sick. "It's worse than sulfur, or methane, or anything you've ever smelt." Sam could see her eyes glazing as she went back. "That's what they smelt like. Like formaldehyde. And rot. And blood."

_Like dead things._

"What happened next, Evie?" Dean prompted gently.

She blinked. Looked up as though remembering they were there.

"I'm not really sure. I think the adrenaline kicked in. I remember thrashing hard…I think I went a little crazy. They couldn't keep hold of me, and my foot hit my m– the female in the mouth. The guy went to help her and I just got up and ran. One of the neighbours called the police. The EMT's said they found me hanging onto a stop sign at the end of the street. The next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital room with a pair of cops peering at me."

Sam watched the tension riddle Dean just as it crept up his own frame.

"What did you tell them?"

She looked away. "Not the truth. I couldn't. I just said that it was dark, and I couldn't see their faces. They think it was teenagers on PCP or something." She gasped out a short laugh. "God, when they said that I felt like I was trapped in an episode of _Buffy_ or something."

"If only," Dean muttered, earning him an owl-eyed look from Evie. He cleared his throat and sat forward again. "Look, kiddo, I know this is gonna sound weird but…I think we should drop by your mom's place, have a look around."

"But" she frowned at him, "the cops already went over it. They told me, when I went to ask about my mom."

Dean gave her a thin smile. "Yeah, but they don't have my eyes."

"…a mechanic's eyes?"

Sam fought a smile.

"Yeah." He watched Dean flounder for a second, trying to spin something convincing. "But see cops are only looking for certain things. Maybe a fresh look would reveal other…stuff."

Evie's face was very neutral. Either she'd bought it and was weighing up letting them into her home, or she was onto them and fighting to keep a straight face.

"Okay," she said finally. "Let's go."

**AN2:** Reviews are love. Everybody needs to be loved…


	4. Three: Bloodied Waste

**Three: Bloodied Waste**

It was nice, as houses went. Dark hardwood floors, window boxes in the front downstairs windows, tasteful furniture, and tidy, if you didn't count the spray of blood on the kitchen floor from where Evie was jumped.

While Dean cruised about like a shark through unfamiliar waters, Sam watched Evie hang onto the frame of the kitchen doorway. She looked small and washed out, like a picture with the saturation wound down.

Dean called them from upstairs. Evie's limp was bad enough that Sam had to half carry her up. Someone looking possible skin grafts in the face shouldn't be traipsing round playing detective with a pair of hunters. So much for being good; she'd insisted on coming with them, though Sam had felt obliged to point out that it was probably safer. There was every chance that whatever had attacked her would come back the moment she was left alone again.

They found Dean in Kate's room, looking about with a frown. "Evie, did the cops say if there was any sign of a struggle, or anything? Dents in the walls, stuff knocked over?"

She shook her head. "No signs of forced entry. No signs of a struggle. Um, but the wardrobe was in front of the door, and the bedside table was knocked over."

The bedside table, on which there was a framed picture of their dad grinning back at them.

Sam found himself shuffling like an idiot for about two seconds before he realized wasn't required to say anything about it, then watched Dean shuffle about doing the same. Evie luckily failed to notice them doing the Jig of the Awkward and just looked miserable. She carefully lowered herself to sit on her mother's bed, legs too short to reach the floor, sneakered feet swinging.

For a moment, Sam was convinced Dean was morosely regarding the bloodstain on the leg of her jeans until he saw his brother's gaze sharpen.

"Hey," he said softly, crouching and brushing his fingertips over the floorboards beside the bed. "What happened here?"

"Are those claw marks?" Evie whispered.

Dean's jaw tightened. "No." He helped her stand. "Gimme a hand with the mattress, Sam."

* * *

"Will he be okay down there?"

Sam looked up from the open vent. Evie's expression of concern was almost comical. He smiled.

"He'll be fine, Evie. This isn't the first time we've had to do something like this."

She looked a question at him.

Sam contemporized. "We had to retrieve a friend's cat once."

Which was almost true; Ellen had called him and Dean once to help her get rid of a young chupacabra that had taken up residence in the Roadhouse's air vents. And a chupacabra was almost a cat…if you crossed said cat with a coyote, a wallaby and a rabid porcupine. Until his resurrection, Dean had still born (and bitched about) the scars on his rear where the thing had crept up behind him and gone in for a literal head-butt.

"So he's not gonna get stuck?" She peered cautiously into the vent as the sound of Dean banging around and swearing drifted back to them. "I mean, should he have greased up or something first?"

This time he was unable to keep a small laugh from escaping. "What?"

She gave him a nervous half-smile. "I keep on flashing on that _Simpsons_ episode. You know that one where Santa's Little Helper gets into the school's air vents…"

"…and Groundskeeper Willie oils up and goes in to get him." He grinned. "I know the one."

The half-smile turned into a full one, and then became a little wry. "This really isn't how I saw my day turning out. Or my week for that matter."

"I think we're pretty much in the same boat with you there."

The banging and swearing was getting closer. Dean was coming back.

When he finally emerged from the vent Sam felt his stomach clench.

_Oh no._

Dean's face was grim; brows drawn down, jaw tight, eyes full of a storm either waiting to burst or sulk silently on the horizon, it was hard to tell.

Either way, Sam knew what it meant.

Whatever Dean had found in the vents had confirmed what both of them had suspected since Evie described her attackers.

Kate Milligan was dead.

* * *

Officer Carl Sage had seen some weird shit in his time. This was by no means the weirdest, but something about this case made his hackles stand to attention and the bile churn in his gut.

He was the first on the scene when the girl – Evie Milligan again – called and asked for an officer to swing by.

"There – there was this smell," she said, leading him up to her mother's room. It was just as the techs had left it the last time they swept the place. This would be the third, if she was right and there was something here.

"It got stronger in here," Evie explained, kneeling awkwardly. "There's a vent under the bed. I think it was coming from there."

He felt his knees protest as he knelt, peering under the bed. Sure enough, there was the vent.

"Ok…can you tell me why you wanted to show me this, Miss Milligan?" he asked gently. Girl was under a lot of stress, after all.

He didn't think he'd ever forget the look she gave him. Like there was some huge animal standing at her shoulder, breathing down her neck through a mouthful of teeth and she knew it was about to take a chunk out of her.

"It smelt like blood," she said. "Like old blood."

Haunted and resigned, all in the same set of eyes.


	5. Four: Bitten Apple

**Four: Bitten Apple**

He turned the picture over and re-read the inscription for perhaps the twenty-second time.

'July 05, me and Dad after driving lessons'

He'd found it in what appeared to be Evie's old bedroom, tucked into the mirror on the dresser. One glimpse, and somewhere, a chord was struck. He'd taken it, tucking it into his coat pocket without even thinking or wondering why.

He was wondering now.

Turning it again, he took in the tableau looking back at him; the Impala was parked in the driveway of Kate Milligan's house, and it was probably her that had taken the picture. In it, Dad lent against the front of the long, glossy black hood, smiling one of those wide smiles that had been so rare in the last days. He wore jeans and plaid, and five days worth of beard, looking like every other off-the-clock mechanic in the country.

Beside him, of course, was Evie, aged fifteen and looking it. There was still that softness that mid-teens tended towards, the last throes of childhood. She sat on the hood with her bare feet were up on the front bumper, leaning on Dad for balance, his arm around her shoulders. The charm bracelet, clearly visible, glinted on her left wrist.

She was smiling, too, and seeing it so close to Dad's…seeing them so close to each other, it was impossible to deny: like him, like Sam, Evie had their Dad's smile.

This was their little sister.

Beside the window at the small dinning table, Sam heaved a sigh and sat back. Dean tucked the picture back into his pocket and cleared his throat.

"Tell me you got something."

"Plenty." He flicked through several windows on the laptop as Dean took a seat beside him.

They were safely ensconced in their own room at the Kelsey Manor, one two doors down from Evie's room, though Dean wasn't going to let Evie stay there by herself, not with the freak of the week gunning for her.

"I looked through the latest on the local news site, and you'll never guess what I found."

"Fill me in then."

Sam obliged. "Grave robberies. Eight over the last two weeks, mostly from family mausoleums."

"So, what? Some Wicca-bitch gone dark side looking for spare part for her hex bags?"

"I don't think so. If that were the case they'd probably go for older bodies, stuff that's rotted down to bones. All the bodies that have been taken so far are new…still juicy."

"Meaning they'd still have their new-body smell."

"Complete with formaldehyde. Just to shake things up, this isn't the first time this has happened. Whatever's doing this – the taking bodies bit anyway – it's done it before." He handed a stack of print outs to Dean. "Found it on a local news site. Apparently they made the connection before I did."

It was an article detailing the recent cadaver thefts, but in the later paragraphs Sam had highlighted mention of the same crime happening nineteen years ago in…January of 1990. There was a picture too; cops and bystanders around a taped off crime scene in a graveyard. In the crowd, Dean picked out one familiar face.

"Hey, you seen this?"

Sam nodded. "I think this was Dad's case, from before. I think maybe he didn't kill whatever's doing this, or he thought he had."

"Probably the latter. We both know Dad wasn't sloppy enough to leave something with the potential to wander round still causing chaos and bloodshed." Dean frowned. "So, to recap, Dad thought he killed whatever's stealing corpses, and now, what? Its back and coming after Evie? Why?"

His brother shrugged. "Revenge? Maybe we're dealing with something smart enough to know the connection between Dad and the Milligans. Maybe it wanted Dad but instead…"

"It found Kate and Evie and came after them." A sudden, unpleasant thought occurred to him. "What's the bet it knew Evie would panic when she was attacked and would try to call Dad? Used her to lure him in so it could get him too."

"Only it got _us_ instead." Sam sighed. "There's one thing, a pretty big thing that's still bugging me."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. We don't know what this thing is, and we don't know who it was that called Evie to tell her that her mom was missing. I mean, she said he claimed to be one of her mother's friends…"

"But she didn't know him. Did you get a name from her, when we were at the house?"

"Joe Barton."

"Our monster? Potentially?"

Sam slowly shook his head. "No, I don't think so."

"Why's that?"

Sam looked apprehensive, then turned back to the laptop and brought up another window. This one was as missing person's report. The guy in the picture was white, average looking and wore…dorky looking glasses.

_Shit._

"Joe Barton went missing almost a week before Kate Milligan did."

"And yet he was feeling frisky enough to hook up with Kate and try to kill Evie." Dean sighed. "Only it wasn't Kate."

Sam had that apprehensive look on again. "Dean, are you sure…?"

"Sam, there was too much left in that vent for her to be alive. Pretty crucial bits too." Dean ran a hand over his face, remembering. He knew that human beings could be reduced to so many pieces, had seen it on occasion. It never got any easier to think back on, let alone look at. "And apart from that there was a lot of blonde hair. And torn up fingernails, wood shavings still under them. And still attached to the fingers…"

"Okay," Sam said quickly, "I get it. Moving on. What would dig up bodies, tear apart living ones and then take on the victim's form?"

"Depends on what they did to the stolen bodies –"

There was the sound of a car pulling up outside, and then limping footsteps before the door was flung wide and Evie stalked in. Or tried to; she managed to get in the door and slam it closed before tilting back and leaning against it. She was pale again, and Dean could see the sheen of sweat on her face. Her hair looked like it had lost a fight with a wind tunnel, and there were dried tear tracks down both her cheeks.

She looked terrible.

She also looked very, very angry.

_Ah, hell…_

"You two," she began, voice low and dangerous in a way that was uncomfortably familiar, "you two have _so much_ explaining to do."

Dean felt the sudden urge to say 'uh-oh.'

She limped heavily away from the door, past where they were sitting at the table and stood lopsidedly hanging onto the bathroom doorway, glowering at them.

"What the _fuck_ is going on here? My mom is missing, something _inhuman_ attacked me wearing her face and now, for the _third freaking time_ my house is a goddamned _crime scene_!"

She looked between the two of them, shaking with exhaustion and fury. Dean hoped she wasn't one of those girls who cried when she got angry. She'd done enough of that lately.

"And how is it that the 'inhuman' part doesn't faze either of you? Huh, why is that? Dean, you knew those weren't claw marks on my mom's floor, and you knew where to look for…for…for stuff."

(Overhead, unnoticed the light fixture began to rotate counter-clockwise.)

Dean looked at Sam, who looked back at Dean. There was an exchange of grim, worried looks. This had been inevitable, really, and they both knew it. In cases like this, where someone was so thoroughly intertwined with aspects of a case…when they were bright enough to know when something strange was going on…there was only so much you could do to shelter them.

Evie had been barreling toward a full revelation the moment she got that call from the thing wearing Joe Barton's face and voice.

Their silence seemed to push her that little bit further.

"You guys are _not_ mechanics," she breathed.

"No," Sam said carefully, standing to take her shoulders and guide her over to one of the beds. "Sit down before you fall down, Evie." He took the bed opposite her – Dean's – and sat watching her with open, honest eyes. "What do you want to know?"

"Sam…" Dean murmured.

"She deserves to know, Dean," Sam said over his shoulder. Dean could hear the antagonism lurking just under the words. Like it had been for the past few weeks.

_What's got you so strung out, little brother…?_

"I know," he said instead, dragging a chair over. He set it backwards at the foot of both beds and straddled it, folding his arms over the chair's back and watching the pair of them.

His siblings.

"Just make sure you tell it right, Sammy."

* * *

It had been late afternoon when Evie had blown in, and so three hours later, the sun had gone down. Halfway through the narrative Dean had silently gotten to his feet and turned on the lights, then slid smoothly back into his chair, never once breaking the flow of the story as the two of them talked and talked and talked…

Evie sat stunned and silent throughout, listening patiently as they laid the bare bones of their lives before her. Only the barest details of their hunt for Azazel along with stories of growing up on the road, the things they'd hunted over the years…how they came to be here – and it still took hours. The facecloth Sam had retrieved for her lay cold and unnoticed in her open hands, leaving little wet spots on the legs of her jeans.

"So," she murmured haltingly, when both brothers had wound down, "so…monsters are real. Every bad thing I imagined when I was a kid, or saw in some stupid movie…they're all real."

"Sasquatch is a hoax," Dean volunteered. "Unless you count Sam."

Sam glowered, but it got a brief smile out of the shell-shocked girl on the bed opposite.

"But…some evil thing got your mom, and our dad and now…" She trailed off, chewing her lip and looking down. "My mother's dead, isn't she?"

Sam reached out, almost without thinking, and took her hand, holding her damp fingers loosely in his much bigger palm. "Evie…"

"No, Sam, I know. I know it. When the cab pulled up to bring me here…there was a coroner's van in the driveway."

Maybe a day from now, Sam guessed, she would get a piece of paper or an officer knocking on her door to tell her that DNA evidence had identified the remains as that of her mother. It wouldn't really hit her 'til then. Now, she could live in her shell, and think what to do next. Sam thought he had an inkling of what that might be.

_Sure enough…_

She scrubbed her other hand over her face and said, "In the meantime, I want to help."

Dean was on his feet in an instant. "Absolutely not."

She glared up at him. "Why?"

"Evie, come on. You're injured, badly."

"Yes, I realize that," she responded testily.

"Don't snap at me," Dean said, indignant. "I'm just saying that hunting something like this? Its going to take me and Sam at full physical capacity as it is. It always does. Kiddo, you can't even run right now."

"I –"

"Dean, just give her a chance."

Dean threw his arms up. "What chance? Seriously, c'mon, Sam, admit it; we always end up running. Either we're running from the damn thing or running after it."

"Well, yeah, but there are other ways she can help, Dean. I mean research, for one."

"What, the research we've already done? Its legwork from here on out, interviews, that kind of thing."

"I can still talk you know," Evie put in.

Dean gave her a challenging look. "Can you pretend to be a federal agent looking into a series of cadaver thefts?"

She blinked. "Um…yes?"

"No," Dean corrected firmly. "No potential criminal record for you."

Sam tried to get a word in edgeways. "Look, Dean it wouldn't be that bad. We've never been caught –"

"Because we're good, Sam, and we've been doing this longer than five minutes," Dean swung back. "We don't have time to take a novice out on a serious hunt we're still fighting blind on, especially one with a pair of monsters that are jonesing for said novice's head on a platter."

All of them cringed at that.

"I'm just saying, those things, whatever they are, they killed her mother and oh, I don't know, maybe we can relate to that?"

"Laying on the sarcasm a little thick, don't you think, Sammy?" Dean growled.

"Can I –?"

"_No_," both brothers said in stereo.

Evie subsided, looking bad-tempered.

"Haven't you figured out why Dad never told us about her?" Dean continued. "I mean seriously? I can't think of _any_ other reason he would keep this from us."

Sam frowned. What was he getting at?

"He was _protecting_ her, Sam. He didn't want her to have our lives and he didn't want our lives to put her in harm's way. Because let's face it," he said, voice going low and rough for a moment when he looked at Evie, who looked calmly back at him. "People we get close to tend to end up dead. Especially women."

A flash of faces against the back of his eyes. _You can't save everyone, Sam._ More like he couldn't save the ones that mattered. Jess, hair golden when the light hit it the first time he saw her. Madison's dark eyes lighting up when she turned to smile at him.

He imagined Evie, for a moment, torn apart like her mother had been, or throw up on a ceiling and cut open like his had.

Something of that horror must have shown on his face, because Dean said, "yeah, now he gets it."

Snatching up his coat he jabbed a finger at Evie. "No interviews, no legwork." And when her low lip began to slide out in a pout, "no sulking. And absolutely no going anywhere by yourself."

To Sam he growled, "Stay here."

"Where are you going?"

"To do my job!" was the shouted reply as the door slammed shut.

Sam and Evie sat in the wake of the relative calm for a few moments.

"And to think I used to abhor being an only child," she muttered.

Sam managed a small chuckle. "I had days where I wished I was one."

She shook her head, and Sam watched her dig in her bag, retrieving a sipper bottle of orange juice and two bottles of pills. Antibiotics and painkillers, he guessed.

"No one should ever wish that," she said between knocking back two of each with swallows of juice. "People with siblings never realize just how lonely it can be. I would've given anything to have met you and Dean when I met Dad." She sighed, rubbing the backs of her hands over her eyes tiredly.

Sam swallowed. If the dates were anything to go by, he had been in his first semester at Stanford when John had found out about Evie. How different would things have been if he'd gotten a call from Dad or Dean saying 'you have a little sister in Minnesota'?

"You should try and nap or something," he said. "It's been a long day."

"The longest," she muttered, toeing off her shoes and obediently settling back on the bed. "I don't think I can sleep though."

"Just try to rest then."

He watched as she got comfortable.

Then he watched her begin to think.

She was withdrawing right in front of him, pulling away into a shell and stewing, just like Dean had after Dad died, just like he had after losing Jess, and later Madison.

"Hey, Evie."

"Mmm?"

"Dad got you your charm bracelet, right? And bought the charms to go on it?"

"Yeah…"

"Wanna tell me about them?"

She looked at him for a second, then down at the silver chain on her left wrist. "Make you a deal?" she asked softly.

Sam nodded cautiously.

"I'll tell you about the first five charms, if you tell me about the last one, the little bible? Why Dad might have sent it to me?"

"_I think the very last I heard from him was…I got a package in the mail, around July – 'To Evie, stay safe, love Dad…'"_

That would have been early July '06. Just before Dad's attempt to kill Azazel. Just before it all went wrong and their family was torn apart again. Maybe a week and a half before John Winchester died on July 19th of that year.

Sam had some idea of why their father would send his daughter a tiny silver bible.

"It's a deal."


	6. Five: Ghostly Caravan

**Author's Note:** Oh look, a filler chapter. Sigh. Sorry about the delay guys, our modem broke and has the new one has yet to arrive. Christmas cuddles to all who reviewed and alerted!

**

* * *

Five: Ghostly Caravan**

Dean had smelt this before, he was sure, but that didn't stop him recoiling when the scent hit his nostrils.

"…_worse than anything you've ever smelt…"_

That was for sure.

He recognized it, of course. You didn't spend your adult like burning bodies for a living and not come across it. Though it was never as strong, never as immediate.

And he'd never seen it sliding like ichor from a broken stone tomb.

"What is this stuff?"

"Embalming fluid," the custodian said, distaste evidently.

_Oh, I am right there with ya, buddy_, Dean thought. Out loud he said, "And the smell; formaldehyde, right?"

"Yes. I hope this makes you aware of just how serious the situation is, Agent Nugent," the older man said, somehow both stern and earnest. "These graves weren't just desecrated…"

"The bodies were, too, yeah, I figured," Dean said, sighing as he stood. "Even dead people don't leak without a little help."

* * *

"Okay, so the little Impala was for your driver's license and the guitar was for your fourteenth birthday…what about the capital W?"

Evie rolled her eyes, but smiled. "That was kind of a muck up on his part."

"Yeah?" Sam was smiling too. "How's that?"

"He was in town for that birthday – my fifteenth – so he picked me up after school. Took me to Cousin Oliver's, bought me pie and ice cream and just, you know, mountains of junk food." She laughed a little. "God, his face when I opened that little box and there was the silver W instead of…I don't know an E or an M or something. He'd probably picked the charm without thinking and forgotten about it until I opened the box…"

It said a lot, Sam thought, what his father had unthinkingly picked to hang from his daughter's wrist.

"W for Winchester," Sam murmured, and Evie's head came up.

"Yeah," she said. "He, ah, he got really embarrassed." She tried smiling again. "He said something like, 'look it's an M, too, when you turn it upside down.'"

Sam choked, then laughed, trying and almost successfully picturing his father's look of chagrin and sheepishness as she tried to find a way to explain his choice of present to a perplexed fifteen-year-old girl. Evie was laughing a little too.

"It was nice though. It…it kind of – well, I used to pretend that it meant that I was real to him."

And somehow, Sam got it. "That you were a Winchester, too."

She looked at him sharply, that terribly solemn look he recognized from seeing so many times on his brother's face. "Yeah…yeah but I'm a Milligan first. I…I'll always be a Milligan."

She looked down, fidgeting with the little set of angel wings on her bracelet.

"I have to be. I'm the only one left."

* * *

Dean sat in the car for what felt like a long time after talking to Lisa Barton.

Some things – certain things – about this case were sliding into place for him. Joe Barton had not been taken randomly.

"_He was a deputy…but that was a long time ago…"_

About eighteen years ago, in fact. He pulled out the photocopy of the article and took in that photograph; that captured moment with his father lurking in the background. In the foreground of the shot, on the cordoned off crime scene stood a younger, less bald, but no less dorky looking Deputy Joe Barton. Dean could see the resemblance between the Now and Then shots this time.

"_After he'd had a few he'd talk about it sometimes…said he had help from someone…a specialist."_

A very special specialist. A specialist who in an effort to protect the daughter he'd left behind, had removed all notes on the case from his journal, leaving his sons blind on what they were now facing.

Fan-freaking-tastic.

One thing Dean knew though, for sure now, was that the grave robberies weren't the main event. They were awful, but they were par for the course.

What these things wanted was the real reason for this hunt.

They'd already got Dad's partner, and his lover (as much as it pained him to think of it), and now they were gunning for his girl.

All they had to do was save her…which circled back to the initial problem of finding out what they were saving her from.

_Fuck._

* * *

Sam slipped down in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

Evie had finally dropped off about half an hour ago, curled up on his bed, hugging her mother's jacket that she'd been wearing when she'd arrived. Sam could just see the charm bracelet catching the light on her left wrist.

"_What about the revolver?"_

"_He wanted to teach me to shoot. Mom just about hit the roof when she found out. Said there was no way in hell, not until I was eighteen. He said he'd teach me then, gave me this to remind me."_

"_Do you still want to learn?"_

"_I – I think so, yeah."_

"_When this is over…Dean and I…we'll teach you…"_

Now he was wondering what he'd promised himself too. Dean was determined that Evie would have nothing to do with hunting, and for the first time Sam wondered if that would extend to learning how to fire a gun. Or maybe it was his perception colouring things; learning how to use a firearm didn't have to have anything to do with hunting, but the little revolver on Evie's bracelet bore a startling and somewhat unsettling resemblance to the Colt.

Sam was just thinking about making coffee (instant was better than nothing, and he had to stay up 'til Dean got back and took his turn keeping watch) when Evie twitched, the movement sharp as one hand convulsed.

Sam sat forward, noting her eyes darting behind her lids and watched to see if she would wake.

Her breath hitched, only to ease out slowly as she settled.

Sam was about to do the same –

Something rattled in the bathroom. Glass against plastic. Sam was on his feet in an instant. In the next he had the sawn-off in hand and was stalking to the bathroom door. It took less than a minute to sweep the small room and flick the shower curtain back to check for unwanted guests. Unlike every cinematic imbecile that ever got himself slaughtered, Sam made sure to look up and check the upper reaches of the ceiling as well.

_Nothing._

Something rattled in the air vent.

_Or not._

Sam brought the shotgun back up and backed out of the bathroom, feeling his heart rate begin to climb.

On the bed, Evie whimpered in her sleep. Sam had his back to her, still covering the bathroom, but he could hear her beginning to thrash, probably caught in the throes of a nightmare.

Overhead, the light fitting began to swing violently, sending the shadows in the room dancing in macabre patterns.

_What the hell?_

From across the room there was a series of rattles and a snarl echoing in the central air vent before the power went out, covering the room in blue dark relieved only by the floodlights of the parking lot outside.

"Shit," Sam hissed. "Shit, shit, _shit_. Evie. Evie, wake up." He crouched beside her, gripping one shaking shoulder and covering the vent with the sawn-off in a one-handed grip. "Evie, come on, wake up!"

She let out a soft, choked sound and came awake with a full body jolt. There was a crash from the bathroom that startled them both. Sam recognized the tinkling of breaking glass.

"What…Sam what was that?" Evie asked, voice rough with sleep and fear.

"I don't know, but if I had to guess I'd say something just knocked the mirror off the wall."

"Something's in there?" she breathed.

"I think so. Evie, I need you to get up, get your shoes on and get out the front door."

"What about you –?"

"I'll be right behind you, okay?"

"O-okay."

Sam swung back and forward, trying to cover both the bathroom and central vent while Evie scrambled into her shoes and hurried for the door.

The rattling was getting louder, closer, and Sam thought he could hear the wet, rough sound of something breathing through its mouth.

Behind him Evie was out the door and limping quickly out into the parking lot. Sam backed out after her. Just before he stepped through the door the central vent's cover burst from it frame with a sound like the clap of huge bell and something vaguely human shaped hauled itself out in one fluid movement.

Sam didn't stick around to see what kind of human shape it was. He fired once then kicked the door shut behind him and ran to Evie. She was propped up against the only vehicle in the lot, an old two door truck with an open bed.

He slumped beside her, resting a hand on her nearest shoulder. "Hey, you okay?"

She nodded, face still lit up with fear. "Yeah. I was careful. I mean, I don't think I tore anything." She swallowed. "My bag's in there though. With my pills."

"Its okay, we'll get something –"

He had no warning what-so-ever as his legs were jerked out from under him.

**

* * *

AN:** Like I said, filler chapter. But hey, look! There was siblingly bonding! And a cliffhanger, which I haven't done in like, forever… So, review? Or, y'know, flame, if your into that kind of thing.


	7. Six: Psalm 23

**Author's Note:** I am so sorry it took so long to get this up! It's summer here and as usual I'm over at the island working. We have no computer at the bach and thus no internet…I will endeavor to take a laptop down with me next time though.

Some of you will notice the new chapter titles, and hopefully you'll recognize them as phrases taken from 'Long Road Out of Eden' by The Eagles, the song for which this fic was named, and which I think perfectly represents it. Listen to the lyrics, you'll see why.

Big loves to all those who faved, reviewed and alerted, you rock my socks.

And now, onwards…

**

* * *

Six: Psalm 23**

His chin hit the pavement, scraping as he was dragged backwards before he could get his arms under himself. He heard Evie shrieking his name and glimpsed the shotgun shining under the floodlight, too far to be grabbed.

Then Evie was down beside him, gripping him under his arms and desperately digging in her heels, trying to backpedal as whatever had hold of his legs tried to drag him under the truck. He could feel its nails piercing the skin of his calves, knew there would be holes in the legs of his jeans.

"No, no, no!" Evie was gasping, "No, you can't have him…"

Both of them yelled as the thing yanked hard and Sam barely had time to turn and grip the edge of the truck's paneling. Beneath it there was another snarl of rage…that was nearly drowned out by a different kind of snarl.

The Impala roared in the lot, and Evie screamed, "DEAN!" over her shoulder just as their brother leapt from the driver's side. He heard the scrape of metal on asphalt as Dean scooped up the shotgun.

"No," Evie said through clenched teeth. "No, you can't have him, YOU CAN'T HAVE HIM!"

She gave one gargantuan heave, and by some adrenaline-soaked miracle they both flew backwards, Sam's leg coming free with a blaze of white pain. Both he and Evie landed on their backs, but he sat up in time to see Dean swing the gun down and let loose a blast that lit the underside of the truck like a lightning flash. The air reeked of spent gunpowder and formaldehyde.

"I think I winged it," Dean muttered, peering under the truck. Then he looked over his shoulder, past Sam. "Oh, shit, _shit_! Evie!"

Sam looked over his own shoulder and scrambled to his feet.

Evie was still on her back, breathing hard. Blood was coursing from her leg again and she was quivering with agony.

"Sam, help me get her up."

Ignoring the shooting pain in his ankle, Sam helped Dean lever Evie up into his brother's arms. She didn't cry out, but gripped their arms and shook, turning her face into Dean's shoulder, a shout caught low in her throat…for one painful moment, Sam was taken back to the day they had exorcized Meg Masters; her quiet, bloodied pain and the screams she hadn't let out.

"Get into the passenger side, I'll hand her to you."

Sam did as he was told, carefully cradling her with one arm and using the other hand to press the towel that had still been in the backseat over the flowing leg wound. He felt something warm and wet smear against his neck, and realized Evie was crying silently against his shoulder.

"Shh, it's gonna be okay," he whispered, as Dean slammed the driver's side door and gunned the engine. "It'll be okay…"

_Don't go making promises you can't keep, Sam._

To Dean he said, "Where're we going?"

"We can't deal with this by ourselves," his brother said grimly. "She needs a doctor. We're going to the nearest ER."

* * *

His impressions of the next few hours were blurred with adrenaline and sleeplessness, as he and Sam staggered into the ER, shouting for help, before the staff swarmed them to take Evie from his arms.

One that would stay with him in shocking clarity was the moment they put her on the gurney. Her weight was lifted away from him by capable hands, and yet he felt his coat sleeve jerk.

Evie was gripping his forearm, green eyes frantic, bright and filled with terror, shinning out of her white face. With the near telescopic vision brought on by adrenaline, he could pick out each freckle – _freckles just like his_ – over her nose.

"Dean, I don't –"

He turned his hand and gripped hers. "I'm not going anywhere, kiddo."

He heard one of the orderlies ask, "You a relation?"

"She's my sister," he answered. When they began to wheel her away, taking him along for the ride, he looked back for a minute, over his shoulder at Sam. "You okay?"

Sam called back, "Yeah, stay with her."

Just before they took her into a room set off the main ER, he saw a pair of nurses helping his brother limp to a bed, a third standing by with gloves and scissors in hand. No doubt getting his own leg seen to.

In the next second he was out of sight, and the curtains were pulled round his sister's bed. The nurses moved in a whirlwind of scrubs and quick voices. Evie's old bandages were cut away, an IV line put into the hand Dean wasn't holding (her eyes pinched closed, but she never cried out), and a sedative applied. Dean ran his thumb over her knuckles as they cleaned and re-bandaged her leg, and she gazed back at him, expression hazed and hushed with drugs.

Then the surgeon came in, and began talking about surgery and split-thickness grafts…about scarring and infection…about donor sites…

"Hey, Doc."

The older man peered at him. "Yes?"

"With the skin donor thing…is it possible I could – I mean she's my sister, isn't there some way I could…?"

He trailed off, somehow at a loss for what he was trying to convey. He felt more than saw Evie's head turned to him, definitely felt her fingers close and little tighter over his palm.

"Donate _your_ skin?" the surgeon finished for him.

Dean nodded.

The surgeon (Dean couldn't for the life of him remember the guy's name) sighed and folded his arms. "You could. It's called an allogeneic graft, or an allograft. But usually donated skin is taken from a cadaver."

Dean pressed his lips together to keep from swearing and Evie made a small distressed sound.

"_But_," the surgeon stressed, "It's a temporary measure. The body rejects those grafts after seven days. You'd have to go back into surgery then and have a second graft done from your own skin anyway. Better to have the autograft done with and begin recovering."

Dean scowled. "And how long will that take?"

"Since this is a leg wound, I'd say the regular week to ten days in bed with the leg elevated. After that, careful movement, and keeping the graft supported. The nurses can give you a more detailed care plan…"

_A week to ten days._

Dean wanted to break something. They should have had this thing sorted out by now, but instead they were getting their asses kicked by the freak of the week. Now Evie was going to be on her back as helpless meat for another week unless they got this thing, and quickly. It would mean staying in or near the hospital to keep an eye on her, he and Sam moving in shifts to research and hunt. Working separately, especially these days with the stakes climbing so high, made Dean uncomfortable. And there was no telling how bad Sam's newly injured leg was going to be…

He looked up, mouth set. Evie was watching him, face resigned and tight with distant pain. He noticed that the surgeon had left. Familiar, if hitched, footsteps announced Sam's imminent arrival.

Evie tugged the hand still holding hers.

"You don't have to stay," she murmured.

Dean rubbed his thumb over his little sister's knuckles and managed a smile for her.

"Yeah I do."

* * *

A few hours ticked restlessly by, in which Evie was moved to a trauma ward pending her surgery. Sam and Dean trailed after her, setting up camp in her corner of the room until the nurses came to remove them. Dean snarled, flashing the badge he still had on him. This of course only served to get him turned out faster, Sam limping reluctantly at his heels.

But at least there was salt her windows and a knife tucked under the mattress in easy reach.

Dean remembered sending Sam back to the motel with instructions to go through their room and Evie's, laying down salt and iron and devil's traps before getting changed and getting some sleep. He settled himself in one of the family rooms and prepared for the long haul armed with bad hospital cafeteria coffee and Sam's notes on their elusive monster.

"Taking work home with you, Agent?"

Dean looked up. It was Evie's surgeon, wearing a lab coat over his scrubs this time and bearing more in the way of stubble. He rubbed his own chin, feeling the familiar rasp and gave the doc a rueful half-smile.

"Kind of. Although at the moment home is a motel room, so…"

The surgeon smiled. "An out-of-towner…one of the nurses said your Evie's brother though?"

"Uh…yeah." His fabricated role was starting to catch up with him. Luckily, the doctor seemed willing to believe something else. Dad always said it was easier to let people lie to themselves.

"I'm just guessing but…you're here investigating what happened to Kate and that bartender, right?"

No mention of the bodies…

Dean turned the smile up to wry, jeeze-you-caught-me levels. "Yeah. Kinda close to home, I know, but she called me and…" He gave a loose shrug. "Its family, y'know. I swung it and got out here."

The surgeon nodded, looking morosely at his shoes. "Yeah…" He seemed to gather himself, then took the chair opposite Dean's, looking earnestly across the coffee table at the hunter. "Look, I – I knew Kate...rather well."

Oh, _really_?

Dean put an inquiring expression on his face, hoping it was a polite one. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Look, we were friends. I'd hoped…" The brief anguished look of a lover thwarted. "But, a-anyway, I just thought you should know that the remains found in the Milligan's house came here for autopsy."

Dean's eyes narrowed. Why was the guy telling him this…?

"If it helps at all with finding who did this to her…to Evie…she should have some sort of closure," the doc finished.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. Thanks for letting me know…uh, look, could I get your details? For emergencies…"

The surgeon, Doctor Carson Fraiser, MD, was happy to exchange numbers and promised to get in touch if-and-or when some interesting new result should surface from the morgue.

Dean watched him go, perplexed. People usually had to have information pried out of them, which was why having Sam along was so useful when it came to interviews. The guy had a knack for it, puppy dog eyes and all, despite being six-four and built like a brick shithouse. Then again it made him wonder, how many of those interviewees would pack up running if they knew just how deadly his big little brother could be…

In any case, the Doc Fraiser would be someone to keep an eye on, especially round Evie…when the damn nurses would let him back into see her.

* * *

Sam arrived back around midnight to relieve him.

"Both rooms are warded up the wazoo," he said by way of greeting, handing Dean a Subway bag. "Find anything else?" He added, gesturing to the scattered papers and their father's open journal.

Dean took the bag, determined to down at least half of the meatball foot-long before driving back to the motel. "Nothing," he said. "Although apparently Evie's surgeon was friendly with her mom."

"How friendly?"

"Just friendly, but hoping to be more so."

"Ah…so, what did you get out of him?"

"That's where it gets weird."

"It gets weird?"

"When doesn't it," Dean replied around a mouthful of meatball.

Sam made a face. "Could you possibly swallow before talking? Seriously, dude, it's not pretty."

Dean smiled and obliged, then ruined Sam's look of relief by belching.

Sam scowled at him and said pointedly, "_Anyway_…the doctor?"

Dean briefly wondered where his brother's sense of humour had gone and whether he was willing to give up the other half of his sandwich in order to lure it out. Maybe not. He was really hungry…

"Anyway," he continued, "Doc Fraiser was happy to give out the location of Kate's remains and the possibility of more information."

Sam looked puzzled. "He just…told you this?"

"Yeah, kinda eagerly too. Which was weird, 'cause usually we have to weasel stuff out of people. Even with a badge."

Sam nodded. "Or bribe them. Still, if he was a friend of Kate's…maybe it's innocent and he thinks he's helping."

"Yeah, well, my day's been a little too interesting since my non-existent breakfast, and I'm pretty sure its going to continue in that vein, so even if the Doc is innocent…"

"I'll keep an eye on him – man you must be tired; your paranoia's showing."

"Whatever." Dean threw a balled up wrapper at him and stood. "Evie's op is scheduled for ten AM, I'll see you then."

* * *

Ten AM found Dean standing in the corridor outside the operating theatre, watching as his sister was wheeled through the swinging double doors. The tips of her fingers were just visible over the edge of the bed, still resting where he'd been forced to leave them…forced to let go.

Sam stood listlessly beside him, both brothers at a loss suddenly. The last forty-eight hours was taking its toll. They'd been trying so hard to protect her, protect her like Dad had wanted…and now she was going somewhere they couldn't follow, into a sterile, brightly lit world they couldn't keep her safe in.

Doctor Fraiser was there, looking sympathetic. "There's an observation level for this theatre," he told them. "Usually we only let intern in there, but if it would make you feel better…"

Dean looked at him, and something must have shown on his face…Fraiser looked down and stepped away, through those swinging doors.

Stand above the room, look down beyond the bright lights and watch as they cut skin from her thigh to cover the wound at her calf…

"I don't know if I can do that, Sam," he managed. "I don't know if I can watch…"

His brother's look was as haggard as his own. "I don't think we have a choice," he said. "I think we owe it to her." He looked down the corridor to where Fraiser had disappeared. "He's in there with her…this way we keep an eye on both of them.

"This is how we keep her safe."

**

* * *

AN2:** Deviating from the episode more wildly now, and wow is it ever interesting to write. I'm trying to keep a lid on my inner sap when it comes to writing the sibling interaction and keep things authentic; let me know how I'm doing?


	8. Seven: Faraway, FastAsleep

**Author's Note:** Loves, as always, to those who reviewed. We've left the original script entirely now, so its anyones guess as to where we go from here.

Have fun…

**

* * *

Seven: Faraway, Fast-Asleep**

Dean stood on the observation level, hands jammed into the pockets of his father's jacket, and watched as Evie was very literally patched up.

Rending bodies and rampaging violence he could deal with, did deal with, just about every damn day…but this was different. There was something almost eerie about the precision of it, the carefully measured pace and steps, the gleaming tools and blinding brightness of the lamps overhead lighting the way for the surgeon's knives.

Dean closed his eyes, rubbing a hand across his mouth, before opening them again and finding Evie's face. She lay quiescent in the hands of the anesthetist, the shadows under her closed eyes terribly visible under the white lights.

_Just hang in there, kiddo…_

* * *

As they waited for Evie to come out of recovery, Sam's head slipped down onto his chest, and very unsurprisingly, he fell asleep.

Unfortunately, he dreamed…

_Evie stood gazing at him, the world rusted dark around her._

_She was crying._

_He reached out, reached to take her hand, to make it better –_

_She was flung back from him, pinned to the wall and hauled up, crying and flailing as she went…then she was pinned to the ceiling, to the bars of the devil's trap in the panic room, the fan spinning hollowly behind her._

_This shouldn't be happening, couldn't be happening. He felt her tears falling on his upturned face, and yet, somehow, he __**could not**__ cry out to her, couldn't reach…_

A hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"Sam, wake up," Dean was saying. "Evie's just been extubated. They're moving her back to her ward. Let's go."

Sam stared around wildly, reflexively reaching up to grip his brother's arm...

Dean frowned. "Sammy, you okay?"

Coming back to himself, he released Dean, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "I'm…I'm okay, just tired."

"Well, strap on your big boy shorts, its not over yet." Dean looked like he could sleep for a week and not stir. "Doc Fraiser said it's too soon to tell if the graft will take."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. And there's something else; the Doc got a call. The DNA results came back on the remains we found. It was definitely Kate Milligan."

The look on Dean's face set Sam's hackles rising.

"We knew that though. Dean, what is it?"

His brother sighed. "She wasn't just dismembered, Sam. The coroner found teeth marks.

"She was torn apart and _eaten_."

* * *

"Eaten?"

"Eaten."

Sam groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I want tequila."

Dean frowned at him. "You hate tequila."

"Dean. If things had turned out differently, Kate Milligan could have ended up as our step-mom."

Dean froze. Then he dropped his face into his hands. "Oh God, now I want tequila."

Sam made a go of smiling. "Think they'll let us bring in our own?"

Dean looked up, glancing round the hospital cafeteria. "I wish." He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. "I think we've been looking at this the wrong way, Sam."

"How so?"

His brother pulled out a wad of notes from his pocket, spread them on the small table between them. "Look," he said, pointing out a list Sam remembered making, trying to puzzle out what they were facing. "Cadaver thefts, torn up bodies, live missing and-or-killed, revenge against Dad, the Milligan's and Joe Barton, plus taking on the forms of the killed victims."

"There's a few that match that, Dean. Revenants, some types of zombie, even the odd really twisted shapeshifter."

"Yeah, but none of those eat corpses."

Sam's mind whirled. That one factor changed everything…

"Ghouls. You think we're dealing with a pair of ghouls."

"If the big evil boots fit…"

"But they don't; ghouls don't eat the living, Dean, they're scavengers. They're usually not even a threat to humans unless they get in the way of their feeding. The only reason they're hunted is because they dishallow sacred ground and steal the forms of their last meal."

"Yeah, but these things are intelligent, Sam, and if Dad pissed them off badly enough when he hunted them…"

Sam slumped. "Then suddenly they have a motive to go after the living. Shit."

"Exactly." Dean did not look pleased.

He groaned. "You realize its going to be a fucking mission to track, let alone kill the damn things."

"Yeah. And if they eat something – someone – else, they'll take a new form and we won't know –" Dean froze, hand fisting on the table top. "Fuck."

"What?"

"Evie."

Sam frowned. "What about her?"

* * *

"This is insane."

Dean glowered at him. "You think I want to believe this any more than you do?"

Sam threw his hands up, limping as quickly as he could after his brother as they made their way up to Evie's ward. "Well it's not like you even wanted her in the first place. You're the one who wanted her to be some monster –"

Dean wheeled round, his face a storm front. "Man, I am so close to nailing you right now."

"But its true, isn't it?" Sam said, voice rising with his sudden temper. "If Evie was a monster then Dad wouldn't have lied to us."

"Christ would you just shut up!" Dean snapped. "He lied to us about a lot of things, which isn't the point right now. I don't _want_ Evie to be a lie, Sam, she's our little sister, but the body up in the ward _might not be_ Evie. If there's a third ghoul…one that got her before we even got here…"

Sam's anger drained off as quickly as it had boiled up. "We have to test her."

"I know, but how? Ghouls don't react to salt, silver, holy water – holy anything for that matter – not even iron."

He wracked his brains. There was something, he was sure of it, just out of reach…frigging perfect time to have mindblock.

"Sam?"

"Uh, yeah, just…there was something I read, ages ago…something about asses…"

Dean actually grinned. "Now who's confusing reality with porn?"

Sam unashamedly bitchfaced him. "No, idiot, not…that. Ass as in the animal. Arabian legend has it that ghouls were actually a type of djinn –"

Dean scowled. "I hate those things."

"Yeah, well…they used to lure people off roads, eat their bodies and use their forms to lure others away. The only way a prospective meal could tell if a ghoul was a ghoul was if they saw their feet, which were the only thing they couldn't change. They always remained the shape of ass's hooves."

"_Ass's_ hooves?"

"Ass's hooves."

"You can't just say 'donkey' or whatever?"

Sam threw his arms up.

"Alright, alright! What do you suggest then?"

"Sunlight."

Dean stared at him. "That makes less sense than donkey feet."

"No, look, they only used to hunt at night because then they wouldn't cast shadows."

This time Dean threw up his hands. "Would a linear explanation kill you? Seriously?"

"Okay, look, at night no one could see the hooves and the only way to tell in daylight is from the shadow they cast. The feet would look normal but the shadows would be hoof-shaped."

"Wouldn't they have been able to tell in, I dunno, torchlight or something?"

Sam shook his head. "Only daylight shows them for what they are."

"Evie's bed is too far from the window in the ward to touch her feet…" Dean's eyes widened. "But we have a UV lamp in the car."

* * *

From behind a drawn privacy curtain a strange conversation could be heard.

Good thing no one was around.

"Carefully…carefully…_Sam_…"

"I got it."

"Watch out for the –"

"Damn it, Dean, _I got it_."

"I know but, if it catches on the –"

"Its. Not. Going. To. Catch. Stop nitpicking!"

"Okay, okay."

"Make sure you're ready if –"

"Now who's fricking nitpicking?"

The two of them glowered for a minute. Sam broke off first and rolled his eyes.

"Let's just get this over with."

He held up the UV lamp while Dean braced himself, poised to reach for the machete in its sheath at his back.

"Wha're you doing…?"

The boys froze.

"Uh, hi, Evie."

She peered at them from her pillows. "Dean? Sam?"

"…Yeah." Dean shifted awkwardly and smiled. "Look who's drugs finally wore off."

"Not really." Evie smiled sleepily at them. "I can't feel my feet."

She wriggled her exposed feet where they lay beneath the UV lamp…casting human-foot-shaped shadows.

Exchanging looks of blatant relief, both brothers stepped down, Dean's hand sliding away from the small of his back as Sam switched off the lamp and lowered it.

Dean settled in the chair beside her bed. "We're glad you feeling okay, kiddo."

She chortled, voice still raspy from sleep and intubation. "Me too. That was scary."

Sam perched carefully on the edge of her bed. "You were scared?"

"Yeah," she sighed, her eyes slipping closed again. "But not too much."

He exchanged a look with Dean. "Why not, Evie?"

"Knew you'd be here after," she breathed, and then slipped away, back into sleep.

They held their breath until they were sure she was well away. Dean looked up at him, from where he sat with his chin on his stacked fists.

"Sam," he murmured, "we have to get these things." He closed his eyes. "I don't think I'll ever forgive myself if we lose her."

He watched his brother, silently debating for a minute whether to tell Dean about the dream. He hadn't dreamt like that – vivid, _visceral_ – since Azazel met his end. The blood taken from Ruby had never resurrected his visions…then again, he'd never been in _there_ his own vision either.

Shaking his head, he dispelled the thought. The panic room was two states away in Bobby's basement, Azazel was dead, and there was no way…

He wouldn't tell Dean. Instead, he took his sister's hand, and watched the windows suspiciously as she slept.

* * *

She woke for the second time as afternoon sunlight streamed through a gap in the curtain around her bed.

The world started out blurry, only slowly coming into focus.

And there was Dean, sitting in a chair next to her bed, chin resting on his folded forearms.

He was smiling.

"Hey, daydream believer."

She smiled drowsily back. "I love that song." She peered about. "Where's Sam?"

"Back at the motel, getting some sleep – hey, hey, hey! Evie," he said, settling her back as she tried to sit up, "Evie, its okay. We cleared it, its safe now. Sam warded it."

"Warded?" she wheezed, feeling the cool rush of her oxygen line.

"Yeah." Satisfied she wasn't about to leap up and run screaming from the ward, he sat back in the chair. "Some symbols keep bad things away, means they can't enter a room, or pass through a door or window."

Still a little fuzzy, she struggled to pin things down. "Like…like how ghosts can't cross salt-lines? Or iron?"

He studied her, eyes narrowed a little, and for a terrible second she thought she'd said something wrong. Then the smile came back, small and thoughtful. "Yeah, kinda, only wards are actual symbols; writing in old or dead languages, that kinda thing. They're the defensive stuff. Salt and iron are like the offence."

She blinked at him. "When did sports come into it?"

He smirked, looked down at his folded arms. "More like war games than sports."

She wasn't sure what to say to that. It was still a little hard to focus. Dean was looking at her again.

"Did Sam tell you, about the salt and iron?"

"Yeah. When you were out, last night, we talked and he put some on the window sills, told me what it was for." She fidgeted with the coverlet. "I think it was to make me feel better…wasn't having a great time getting to sleep…"

Dean nodded, mouth quirking. "Sound like Sam," he said quietly.

There was a look on her face, one that she'd seen once on Dad's face, the last time she'd seen him. That look…

She reached out one hand, gripping his wrist lightly and shaking it. "Dean, what's up?"

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Hmm?"

"You got the look."

"The look?"

"Yeah, Dad's look."

That brought him up short, and Evie wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Too late now…

"Last time I saw him, before he gave you the car, I guess…he got this look on his face, like there was something he was going to say, or wanted to, or something. Only he didn't. Just hugged me and left." She thought she was going to cry. "I never saw him again, just got the package the next year."

Now she _was_ crying. Her throat hurt and her eyes stung. Things were getting blurry again…

But she was _warm_. Dean had gotten up, sat on the side of her bed and put his arms around her.

_My brother is hugging me_, she thought. _My brother is hugging me_.

"I'll make it better Evie," he said into her hair. "We know what they are now. We can find them; we can kill them. We'll make it safe, promise…"

Evie put her face into his shoulder and let the tears fall.

_My brother is hugging me…_

**

* * *

AN2:** I like to think this is one of my better chapters. Let me know what _you_ think…


	9. Eight: Caesar's Ghost

Author's Note: Big love to all who reviewed! You're full of WIN!

**

* * *

Eight: Caesar's Ghost**

The rest of the day was spent keeping Evie occupied and watching her sleep when she dozed off. Dean suspected the exhaustion of the past two days was catching up with her, cumulating with her IV pain meds to send her spiraling off into sleep every two hours or so.

It was then, as she slept, that he got a good look at the bracelet as it sat sparkling in the sunlight on the cabinet beside her bed.

Dean regarded it solemnly. That little heap of silver was physical evidence of their father's presence in Evie's life. It was all she had left now…

He shook it off, turned on the tiny TV overhanging Evie's bed, watched bad hospital programming…drifted his gaze back to the shining object on the cabinet top.

He frowned hard at it.

"…_all there is, is family…"_

Dean rested his chin back on his folded forearms with a sigh.

"…_all there is…"_

* * *

Sam arrived to find his siblings watching, of all things…_Scream_.

"Seriously?"

Dean looked up from where he was lazily kicked back in a vinyl hospital chair, socked feet up on the side of Evie's bed.

"What?" he said. "It's a classic!"

Sam rolled his eyes. "You only ever watch it for Jennifer Love Hewitt."

Dean waggled his eyebrows. "Who wouldn't?"

"Who would?" Evie put in. She was propped up on a stack of pillows with the TV remote in hand. Sam noticed they'd taken her oxygen line out and let her wear what appeared to be a set of her own pajamas. "She went from this to _Ghost Whisperer_. The guy in the mask gives a better performance."

"I'm gonna have to go with Evie on this one, Dean," he said, setting down the cardboard takeout tray on the cabinet top. Evie's bracelet was still sitting there from this morning when she'd taken it off for surgery. Sam had kept it in his jacket pocket for safe keeping until she woke up the first time out of recovery.

"You suck," his brother grumbled. "Gimme my coffee."

He handed Dean a cup, then handed a second one to Evie.

She took it, looking a little apprehensive. "I'm not sure I'm supposed to have caffeine…my meds…"

Sam smiled. "Relax, its just hot chocolate."

Evie smiled back. "Aw…" Then she smirked. "It's just like being twelve again." She popped the lid off. "Ooh hey, marshmallows!"

Dean snorted, nearly sending black coffee frothing from his nose before he recovered and started cackling.

"Fine," Sam said loftily, grabbing his own coffee and wrangling another chair out of the corner by the ward door. "I see how it is. Next time I just won't bother."

Evie sipped her hot chocolate and murmured contritely, "Thank you, Sam."

He grinned. "Where're we up to, anyway?"

Dean answered, nose deep in his cup. "Blonde chick's gonna get nailed with the garage door."

"Oh, joy," sighed Sam.

Evie laughed as she ate her marshmallows.

* * *

Dean left Sam with Evie and went back to Kelsey Manor, double-checking the wards before he crashed on his bed and wondered how the hell they were going finish the hunt. Keeping an eye on the ghouls' primary target was fine, but they'd be doing it forever if they didn't find time to kill the damn things.

_If I were a ghoul, where would I hide my evil, corpse-consuming ass…?_

He guessed the next order of business would be to sit down with a map and look for possible nesting sites…

Mind whirring like a wound watch, he shed his jacket and shoes and solemnly regarded the ceiling.

_That's weird._

Had the light always hung at that angle? Dean frowned at it until his phone started going off from somewhere under the heap of his jacket. Following the opening chords of _Smoke on the Water_ he finally pulled it out, not bothering to check the display as he flipped it open.

"Hello?"

"Considering neither of you've called for the past week, I figured you'd managed to get yourselves into trouble again."

"Bobby! Hey!"

"Hey yourself." The older hunter sounded gruff as ever, but there was affection lurking just beneath the surface. He sounded amused by Dean's exuberance. "_Have_ you gotten into trouble again?"

"No. Well, kind of." He reached back and rubbed the back of his neck out of habit. "Me and Sam are on a hunt over in Minnesota."

"I seem to remember you two heading in that direction a few weeks back. How's it going?"

"Not as well as I'd like. There's a pair of ghouls causing trouble for some people…" Dean wondered how the hell he was going to explain Evie without blurting it out.

"They usually do," Bobby said wryly. "Need any help?"

"We could do with an extra set of hands," Dean admitted. "Sam and I have been working in shifts since…God, what day is it?"

"Saturday, last I checked."

Dean put his hand over his face, groaning. "I don't believe it. We only got here Friday. Feels like I've been running round this town for a week."

Bobby snorted. "You sound like it, boy. I've got something to finish up but I'll be there as soon as I can. Anything I should know before I get there?"

Even though Bobby was two states away, Dean froze where he lay, one hand on his forehead, eyes darting nervously.

"Um…"

Bobby let out a long-suffering huff. "What've you done now?"

"Nothing!"

"I've heard that before…"

"Bobby, I swear, this time none of this was my fault."

"Well, then, spit it out. What the hell happened and whose fault was it?"

Dean muttered, "I'm pretty sure it was Dad's."

"…I'm sorry?"

He could just picture Bobby's incredulous whiskered face.

"Dad came through Windom – where we are now – early nineteen-ninety, hunting the ghouls. He had help from a Deputy Barton. Met this nurse, Kate, who…" Dean grimaced, eyes pinching shut, because even now this part was kind of hard to say. "…who kinda looked like Mom…"

"Ah, hell," Dean heard Bobby mutter.

"Yeah, well, that's not even the half of it. Nine months after that –"

"Ah, _hell_."

"Her name's Evie. Pre-med at Wisconsin U." Here came the stunner. "Met Dad when she was twelve."

"That son of bitch." The outburst was followed by a gruff, "sorry, kid, but this is just too much, even for your old man."

Dean sighed. "You're telling me…"

"So, if she was twelve that would've been in…?"

"Late oh-two, 'bout a month after her birthday I think. Sam was only just at Stanford, I was…I think I was working a case solo in Oregon. Or something. Anyway, the ghouls came back. Got Barton, got Evie's mom, and now they're gunning for her. Almost got her too."

"How?"

"Called her, told her that Kate was missing, then jumped her when she came home form college. She's up at the hospital now, recovering from skin grafts."

Bobby did some creative swearing that got a smile from Dean and made them both feel better. That out of his system, he asked, "How're you boys holding up with all this?"

"Things could be worse." Dean thought back, trying to think of a way to explain his big-brother instincts following in the footsteps of Dad's over-protective-father ones. "She's a good kid, Bobby. Got a scholarship for college same as Sammy did." In some ways the similarities were overwhelming.

"I imagine she'd have to have her head screwed on straight to put up with the pair of you idgits. I'll get there as soon as I can, Dean. In the meantime keep an eye on your siblings."

"Will do. Thanks Bobby…"

He flipped the phone shut and absently set in on the bedside table, still staring at the ceiling and its wonky light-fitting. Still listening to that low, fierce internal voice that ran like stuck record. Still hearing that line, that speech that Dad had given Sam all those years ago…

"…_all there is, is family…"_

* * *

Sam looked up at the sound of a book coming down on hard plastic.

Evie had just tossed her novel onto the sling table set across her bed. He watched as she tipped her head back against the pillows, one wrist covering her eyes.

"You okay?"

One green eye peered at him from under her arm. She sighed.

"Yeah, just…the meds are still messing with me a little. I can't focus enough to read, but I'm not groggy enough to sleep. Makes me feel kinda –"

Sam smiled ruefully. "Restless?"

She put her arm down and rolled her head on the pillows to look at him fully. "Yeah."

He nodded. "Dean's the same. Can't ever stay still in a hospital bed."

"What about you?"

"Oh, I'm just as bad." He gave a loose, one-shouldered shrug and smiled again, this time a little smugly. "I'm just better at hiding it."

"Sneaky," Evie said, smiling too.

Sam leant forward in his seat, letting one elbow rest on her mattress. "Well, if you don't want to read or sleep, what _do_ you want to do?"

She shrugged, and fidgeted, avoiding meeting his gaze. "I don't know." He watched her look up, eyes turning to the bracelet where it lay glistening in the sun streaming through the ward's windows. She reached out and picked it up, turning the fine silver links over and over, seeming to count the charms as they passed like rosary beads through her fingers.

"I know – I know that you and Dean know what got Mom." Her voice wobbled and Sam placed a comforting hand on the shin of her uninjured leg. She sniffed a little and went on. "I know that you can hunt them, that you can kill them…"

"We can, Evie," he told her earnestly. "We can get those things, make it right." He reached the same hand out and rested it over her hands, stilling the relentless turning of the bracelet. "I know what its like to want revenge," he murmured.

Evie went still too, taking one ragged breath and easing it back out again. "Revenge," she whispered. She looked up, finally meeting his eyes. "I don't think I'm strong enough for that, Sam. I don't…" She seemed to gaze off, drifting a little. "I don't think I'm built like that."

He squeezed her hands, still cupped carefully beneath his, the bracelet tucked between them. The charms sang gently as the knocked together, tiny silvery sounds… "I am," he murmured. "Most hunters become what they are out of revenge." His mouth quirked; a deeply wry expression. "Its not exactly healthy, but it's the way we are."

She watched him for a moment, eyes tracking back and forward across his face; searching for something. Sam wondered what she found there.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"…you don't have to answer."

He chuckled a little. "Just ask, Evie."

She seemed to brace herself. When she spoke her voice was very, very small.

"How did Dad become a hunter?"

Sam felt the breath go out of him. _Should've seen this coming…_

When he didn't answer immediately she started to stammer. "I mean, I kinda pieced together that it happened a long time ago and that something got your mom – I just…from stuff you and Dean have said or whatever, but I know its really personal and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to –"

He swallowed. "Evie."

She hiccupped to a stop. "Yeah?"

"Its okay, kiddo." He managed a weak smile. "I figured you'd want know eventually. It was a demon."

The look of alarm on her face was almost comical, and any other time Sam was sure he would've laughed. "They're real too?"

"Oh yeah. And about as bad as you can imagine. Evil in its purest and most ancient form." He gathered himself a little, gazing out the window, finding that point of distance that made it easier to talk about. It hadn't been this hard before, back before it had become so personal. Back before he'd come face to face with Azazel's yellow eyes and known he was looking at the thing that took his mother's life.

"One of them came into the house, into my nursery when I was exactly six months old and killed Mom. It pinned her to the ceiling and set the room on fire. Dad got there in time to see the flames start. He handed me to Dean and told him to run, to get out of the house. He only just got out in time himself. After that…"

"After that he started hunting," Evie finished softly.

Sam nodded. "About four months afterwards, actually, if the journal entries are anything to go by."

She looked thoughtful, and a little sad. "Why?" she whispered.

"Azazel had a plan," Sam began, but Evie shook her head, wide-eyed.

"No, no not 'why did the demon attack you'. Sam, that…I get the feeling that's a big thing. A big bad thing that's not mine to deal with, really, and I'm not sure I'm up to dealing with it anyway. I just wondered…" She looked back down at the bracelet trapped under both their hands. "I wondered why Dad never told me about you and Dean. Why he never to you guys about me." She hiccupped, sniffed a bit. "I wish he'd left those pages in," she breathed.

Sam had to agree. If Dad had been honest with all of them, Evie would have grown up with not only a Dad but two big brothers to share the task of keeping a watchful eye on her.

Hell, it could've been Dean that taught Evie to drive in the Impala. She might've had twice the charms on her bracelet from all three of the Winchester men. Sam could've been the one she called for help with homework, Dean could've been the one to greet her dates at the door polishing a shotgun, and between the two of them they might've been able to convince Kate exactly why it was a good idea for their little sister to learn to shoot at age fifteen.

It would've meant that when dead bodies started going missing, he and Dean would have been there in a heartbeat to deal to Dad's unfinished hunt.

Kate might've still been alive. Evie wouldn't now be an orphan the way he and Dean were.

The possibilities were endless and burnt like bright candle flames in his mind, as tempting and pointless as following will 'o' the wisp lights in a swamp. _That way lies madness…_

"Hey." He gave Evie's leg a gentle shake. "No long faces, okay. Besides, I found something in here." He got to his feet and settled carefully on the edge of the bed beside her, tucking one arm over her shoulders and using the other hand to leaf through Dad's journal where he'd set in on the sling table in front of both of them. It didn't take him long to find the page. "Here, September twenty-ninth, oh-four; one word…"

"Minnesota," Evie finished, tracing the tips of her fingers over the words. Very carefully, she laid the bracelet down on the page and spread it out so that it circled the entry. "That was my fourteenth birthday."

"When he got you the guitar charm, right?"

"Yeah." She smiled, remembering. "He called ahead before he got into town, said he'd take me to a baseball game. Couldn't understand why I was so put out…"

"_He really had no idea what to do with a girl. I think it might have been easier for him if I was a boy, y'know?"_

Sam chuckled. "What did you do instead?"

Evie turned a little to look up at him, that smile still in place. She was genuinely happy. "I don't know how, but…he managed to get tickets to this little music festival out of town. We drove down, ate junk food for whole the day, bought t-shirts for bands no one had ever heard of; all the young up-and-comers and wannabes, y'know? There wasn't anyone really famous there, but a whole bunch of tribute bands doing stuff like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles."

She tapped the little guitar with one finger. "On the way home, he stopped at a jewelry store and bought me the charm. We got it put on my bracelet then and there. It was a good day…" Her face seemed to close down, go tense and pensive. "The demon…you killed it, didn't you?"

Sam nodded, unconsciously tightening his arm over her shoulder. "Dean got it, just under a year after Dad died."

She was quiet for a moment. Sam waited, watching her carefully.

"It doesn't end, does it?"

He slowly shook his head. "Hunting…it's not really a job you walk away from. There's always something else that needs to be hunted. More people who need to be saved. Other problems, unique problems, that have to be solved by us because only a hunter knows how to solve them."

She was avoiding meeting his gaze again. "When this is over, you and Dean will go, won't you? You'll leave to pick up another case."

He wanted to tell her no. Wanted to, but couldn't bring himself to lie about it. "Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah, if something comes up, we'll have to go."

Her shoulders trembled under his arm. He heard that particular hitch in her breath and drew her close as the tears started.

"You'll go, and I might never see either of you again." She breathed tears, her voice a wet rasp. "I only just got you guys and I could loose you, both of you."

"No," he said, softly, pressing a kiss to her hair. "No, Evie, we're coming back. We'll always come back, okay? I'll do everything in my power…you have to believe that, Evie. We'll come back." He smiled. "We Winchesters, we're like bad pennies; you never get rid of us."

She let out a small watery laugh against his shoulder.

Sam wondered how the hell he was going to keep this promise.

_

* * *

Evie was thrown away from him, limbs pinned to the wall of the panic room as she was drawn upward, crying and calling out to him._

_Sam stood, utterly still, somehow unable to call back to her._

_Unable to move._

_Unable to help._

_Her tears hit his forehead and cheeks as she was adhered to the bars of the devil's trap. He watched as she trashed helplessly against some unseen power, hair falling in a brown curtain as she twisted like a fish on a hook._

_Given a single lease of movement, he reached up one hand to her, voice still freezing in his throat._

_Evie screamed, face full of pain and anguish…_

"_SAM! NO!"_

Sam jolted awake, struggling to breathe.

What the _fuck_ had that been?

Gasping, he pulled himself upright. He'd dozed off in the chair next to Evie's bed. She was asleep too, _The Big Bang Theory_ re-runs still showing, forgotten, on the little TV that hovered over her bed. She sighed and muttered something without waking, head lolling towards her brother.

Sam gazed at her face, seeing the dream replay in frightening clarity on the backs of his eyes.

There was something very wrong going on here.

Climbing to his feet, he slipped out of the ward and into the next empty room. He dug his phone out of his pocket and scrolled through the contacts list until he found the name he wanted.

After three rings, the voicemail picked up. There was no announcement, no details, no instructions left by the owner, and Sam didn't expect there to be.

"Ruby, its Sam. Look, something's happened, something to do with my abilities and it's…it's freaking me out. Call me when you get this."

* * *

AN2: Dun, dun, dun…okay so it's not much of a cliffhanger, but we're working up to the final chapters here. Ooh, the suspense! Or not. Most of you will have noticed that the quote from John isn't actually the speech Sam gave Adam. I figure Sam didn't repeat it verbatim, so this is my take on it, or what it might have been. Anyway, you know the drill; let me know on your way out, ta.


	10. Nine: The Wreckage

AN: I totally deserve a lynching for taking so long with this. If I have any reviewers left it'll be a goddamned miracle.

* * *

**Nine: The Wreckage**

He pulled over without thinking about it, neatly sliding the Impala into the space left between a shiny older model Bentley and some hybrid monstrosity he couldn't remember the name of.

The girl behind the counter looked up as he entered the shop, and he could feel her cat-eyed gaze taking in the scuffed boots and battered leather jacket, the holes in both knees of his jeans and the already re-emerging stubble on his jaw. Still, her professionalism held out and she smiled at him.

He smiled back, and asked what they had in the way of horror films. Her look of blinking surprise was so very worth it.

He added, "_Scream_ is just such a classic, y'know?"

* * *

The sound of familiar footsteps brought his head up. Sam put down the dog-eared copy of _Pet Sematary_ (probably not the wisest thing to be reading right now, but it was either that or something called _Rosie Meadows Regrets_) and watched his brother approach.

Dean had an oddly thoughtful look on his face. Even as he walked he appeared to fidget, taking something out of his jacket pocket to glance at briefly before putting it away when Sam called softly, "Hey."

Dean returned in kind. "What're you doing out here?" he asked, peering past Sam through the open door of the ward.

Sam followed his gaze, making out the shape of Evie where she lay sprawled on her bed, half hidden by the privacy curtain and the gloom of the ward as evening fell.

"She's sleeping," Sam told him. "I figured I'd read out here. The light's better, but I can still see her." He paused, took another careful look at his brother. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Dean settled himself against the doorway, hands still jammed in his pockets. "Bobby called."

Sam's eyebrows made their way up his forehead. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. Figured we'd gotten into trouble again, you know, since we hadn't called."

Sam shrugged. "And he's right, of course. So're you by the way."

Dean gave him a faintly perplexed look from under his brows.

"We have to get these things, Dean," Sam explained. "Evie's been asking questions about the ghouls, and I've put off telling her what they are." He swallowed, looking away, feeling his throat and jaw work. "I don't want to explain to her that some skulking supernatural scavenger murdered and ate her mother's corpse."

"We'll get it done, Sam. Bobby's coming over as soon as he can. An extra set of hands means someone to watch Evie and two hunters out giving these things a run for their money."

Sam nodded. He got to his feet and switched places with Dean, taking the Impala's keys and striding down the corridor, weary feet heading gladly towards the prospect of rest.

Just before he turned the corner, he looked back.

Dean was standing by the ward doorway, gazing at something in his palm. For a second, Sam thought he saw a glint of silver. Then Dean sighed, put it back in his pocket, and settled in the chair to read.

Sam turned back and headed for the visitor's car-park.

* * *

The night passed quietly, for the most part. Evie suffered a few nightmares around one AM, whimpering her parents' names as she shivered. Dean held her hand and stroked the hair back from her forehead, wondering all the while how it had come to this and thinking helplessly, _I only met you the day before yesterday. How is it possible to care this hard?_

The object in his pocket seemed to be burning a hole there…

He subsisted quietly on cafeteria sandwiches and coffee, occasionally flirting with the nurse at the nearest station to break the tedium as he passed. In the stiller moments, he pulled out maps of the local graveyards and searched for nesting sites, marking them with red sharpie and making whispered phone calls to the custodian about the layouts and particulars of each site.

Only three met the criteria for a ghoul's nest, each having an upper crypt, a basement level and being in close proximity to an underground sewer line big enough for a man to fit through. Ghouls would go anywhere there was room to wriggle, so the line didn't have to be very big.

Still, there weren't many families willing to have their dead that close to sewage piping. Just the Kingsland, the McGill and the Patterson tombs where Dean had found the spilt formaldehyde. Right now the resting place of these unfortunate dead guys was the top of that very short list. Even so, it would pay to check out the Kingsland and McGill places too. Wouldn't it just suck to storm one nest and discover that the squirrelly assholes had gotten clever and built themselves an escape route to nest number two?

Evie shuffled a little in her sleep. Overhead, her IV bag swung gently. Dean watched her, waiting for the signs of distress that could mean pain or a nightmare. But she woke up on her own this time, green eyes peeling slowly open, blinking at him blearily.

"Hey sweetheart, can't sleep?"

She gave one of those deep, sleepy sighs and rubbed her eyes with the backs of half-curled fingers. "Just a dream," she murmured.

He gave her an enquiring look. "Clowns or midgets?"

Evie froze mid-rub and stared at him. One corner of her mouth twitched. "What?"

"Midget clowns?" Dean improvised. "Sam had that one once. Thought he was gonna pee his pants or something."

She snickered, flinging her arm over her face briefly. "You're so weird."

"Not half as weird as Sam, though, am I right? I'll take all the cackling you're doing as a yes."

It only made her laugh harder. When she let her arm fall he met her smile with a small one of his own. Evie let out another sleepy sigh.

"No clowns or midgets," she said, "or even…midget clowns. It was a good one; about the car."

"…the Impala?"

She shook her head, or rather, rolled it a bit on the pillow. "No…"

"That shitbomb you drove over here in? 'Cause the only dreams that would cause are nightmares."

"Why would I dream about my roommate's car?"

"Don't ask me to fathom the female mind…" Dean was puzzled. "Was it…uh…about your mom's hatchback?"

"You know, I'll tell you if you stop guessing."

"Oh, right." He looked at her expectantly.

She looked like she might laugh. "When I was little I used to stay with my grandpa a lot, and one of the things we used to do was to put the cover over his car and read storybooks by the light of a camping lantern."

Dean could picture it. He'd done just about the same thing with Sam when they were small and Dad had had to drive through the night to get somewhere. He remembered that feeling of safety coming from both Dad and the Impala, the solidarity…the feeling of Sam's small body tucked up close to him, his mop of hair against Dean's shoulder as he read aloud for his little brother.

He smiled, faintly wistful. "What kinda car was it?"

Evie looked wistful too. "1970 Rover P5B coupe. Midnight blue. I _loved_ that car."

Dean noticed the past tense. "What happened to it?"

She sighed. "We couldn't keep him, after Grandpa died. We didn't know how to look after him and we couldn't afford to pay for someone to do it for us. We didn't want to sell him to someone we didn't know though, so Mom found this little vintage car museum near Madison and we donated him."

Dean's mouth was twitching with the urge to smile. "'Him'?"

"Have you _seen_ the Rover coupes? That's not just a car, that's a _gentleman_."

He looked down, smiling almost to himself. Maybe the vintage-car-love-thing was genetic, a gene Sam might have missed, but still.

"One day," Evie murmured. "One day, when I've got the money, I'll drive a Rover too. Something in burgundy maybe…"

He let out a huff of a laugh. "You know, I can see that."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's a mental picture that works; Dr. Milligan, MD, driver of a big swanky car."

She snickered. "Yeah, big is right. You could throw a party in one of those things."

He waggled his eyebrows. "What kinda party?"

"Oh, dude, come on!" she cried, half-laughing. "Grow up!" She leant over and threw one of the paper cups on the bedside table at him.

He cackled and batted it away. "Oh, okay, so I should be all," he pulled a serious face, sticking his jaw out and scowling, "'what kind of party, young lady?'"

Evie, still smiling, rolled her eyes. "You're such a goober."

"Whatever." He let his chin rest on one curled fist. "So you're still going back to school? Once we get this all sorted out?"

Evie shrugged, quieted by the sudden change in subject. "I guess. I don't know. It's just…my world's gone sideways, Dean. It's like someone stuck a magnet next to my internal compass and I'm still trying to find true north again. There's going to be so much to do, to figure out." She looked up at him. "I know you found out…"

He raised his eyebrows at her when she trailed off. "Found out what, Evie?"

She shook her head, saying quietly, "I'm not sure I wanna know."

He could guess what she was talking about, and he knew how Sam felt; he in no way wanted to inform this girl of just what killed her mother, and therefore how it happened. It made him a little ill just thinking about it, and considering his experiences to date, that was saying something.

"I'm not sure you do, either," he told her gently. "It's not pretty, Evie."

She nodded and settled back on her bed, watching him over the edge of her pillow. "Will you wake me when Sam gets back?" she murmured.

"Yeah, sure sweetheart."

Her eyes slipped closed, and for the first time in a while, Dean burned to hunt.

* * *

"This is good," Sam was saying.

The brothers were looking over Dean's marked maps of the cemetery spread out on a coffee table in the family room while one of the nurses helped Evie bathe and changed the dressing on her leg.

"Once Bobby gets here we'll be able to go out and get these bastards," his brother continued.

Dean nodded, rubbing a hand over his stubble.

Sam looked up at him. "Dude. You okay?"

"Hmm? Yeah, just…" He gave Sam a small rueful smile. "Just looking forward to grabbing some shuteye, y'know?"

"Yeah, I know." Sam tossed him the keys. "Get going, you really do look like crap."

"Such brotherly affection."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

* * *

Looking back, Dean was never sure why he did it. Exhaustion, perhaps; non-stop hours of running on high alert and the kind of anxiety he had previously only felt when Sam was at some kind of risk.

But when he got into the car and the road back to the motel took him past the graveyard…

"Fuck it."

He swung the wheel round and pulled over, grabbing the iron rounds and his sawn-off from the cache and headed into the dark. His torch beam swung in short yellow arcs as he walked, though the moon was just about full and gave nearly enough pallid blue light to see by.

It didn't take him long to find the Kingsland and McGill crypts, or to confirm they were currently ghoul-free. Bodies had been taken, yes, and there was more in the way of spilt embalming fluid, but the basements were empty apart from the usual dead or rodently residents, and there was no sign of tunneling either.

The Patterson crypt for sure then.

He paused on the threshold, reexamining the spilt formaldehyde and wondering how to go about things. The place had an underground section, but it had been sealed and paved over once its shelves were filled…so when the ghouls set up here they would have had to make their own tunnels down from the surface as well as from the sewer system.

Sam was right, he thought, half an hour later, finding and tracking these bastards was a fucking mission. Wherever they'd put their tunnel, they'd hidden it well…

He was just turning to go and check the grounds immediately outside when he felt the draft.

It was just a frisson of cold against one leg, but it came from the wrong direction and carried and familiar and awful smell with it; carrion.

He turned back, following the faint breeze to a crack in the tiling of the back wall. Prying the heavy granite panel back revealed a narrow passageway, lined with hard-packed dirt and the occasional stringy tree root.

Dean cast his torch beam around it, measuring the steep incline and irregular dimensions. He was going to have to cant his shoulders to get into the damn thing same as he had in the vent back at the Milligan's.

"Oh, great," he muttered, before sitting back and discarding his jacket.

The shotgun had to stay behind, tucked in a corner with said jacket and hopefully out of sight. The 1911 that had been sitting at the small of his back would have to do, though it only had standard rounds at the moment.

"Any more of this bullshit and I really will be claustrophobic –"

– And he wriggled his way into the hole. As predicted, it was awful, and Dean shuffled along as quickly as possible. Once it leveled out, he could make out a faint…well, not light, but at least less darkness.

The less dark part turned out – again, as predicted – to be the underground level of the crypt.

It was a mess.

The shelves had come down at some point, breaking open the stone caskets and scattering their occupants across the floor. Earth had spilled from the ruptured walls to cover the pavers and gather in tall heaps in the room's corners.

Dean hand only to take two steps from the spot where he fell (the tunnel had entered the room at hip height) before he came across what was left of Joe Barton, some of whom crunched unpleasantly underfoot while the rest of him seeped into the dirt or smeared across the floor and Dean's shoes. The only recognizable part of him was his blood-spattered glasses.

"Sloppy Joe," he said quietly, taking what refuge he could in gallows' humor. It wasn't much.

A quick inspection of a pair of unbroken caskets revealed a nest of cranky, squeaking rats and…_oh God_…

The rest of Kate Milligan.

Dean's brain registered that she ended midway down her ribcage then started again at her knees, that there was a piece of her skull missing at the back which made her head lie oddly, and that she didn't have one of her hands…but it was the look on her face (her fully intact face) that made him sit back on his heels and swallow.

The terror there was hard to miss. It was made worse by the fact that he could see Evie in her face, no matter how much his little sister's features favoured their father. He now knew that mother and daughter looked nearly identical when terrified. This was something he could have lived without knowing.

Taking a breath and gathering himself, he explored the rest of the lower crypt. It didn't take him long to find the emergency exit they'd put in; a spot in the ceiling that thinned to a small hole showing the night sky, but from the loose feel of the earth could easily be widened in a hurry to allow something as big as a person. If he didn't was to give the game away though, he'd have to get out the same way he came in.

More tunnel-going. Awesome.

He emerged on the upper level of the crypt a full fifteen minutes later and lay like a landed fish for a few seconds, groaning, "Oh, blessed air," before getting to his feet and shaking off what dirt he could.

Having retrieved both his jacket and sawn off, he made his way back to the car and was in the midst of changing when his phone decided to ring.

He raised his eyebrows at the number, pulled his shirt over his head and answered.

"Doc Fraiser. What's up?"

* * *

Half an hour after Dean left coffee sent out its siren call, wailing undeniably from the tea bay in the family room down the hall.

Sam, helpless to resist, checked Evie (dozing) before padding off to retrieve a cup, and spent the time waiting for the machine to perk checking his voice mail.

"You have – no – new messages."

"Damn it, Ruby," he muttered, and then nearly jumped a foot when his phone went off in his hand. there were a few fraught moments where Sam dropped and caught the thing like some cartoon character trying to catch a piece of soap before he got a proper hold on it and was able to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hey," Dean said, "just got a call from Doc Fraiser."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, says he's got something 'odd' for me to look at, so I'm heading back your way."

"You sure? Its –" Sam checked his watch. "– just past three, man. You don't want me to grab this one?"

"Nah, I'm good. 'Sides, I'm the one doing the whole badge thing."

There was something in his brother's voice that made Sam tense up. "That's not all you called about, it is?"

Dean sighed heavily. "No. Now, don't get pissed off, okay?"

"…why would I get pissed off?"

"I might have gone to check out those nest sites on the way back to the motel…"

"Dean! What the hell, dude? We were supposed to be waiting for Bobby's back up before we went looking for those."

"I know, alright, it was stupid and reckless and all that other stuff. I get it. But hear me out."

"Fine."

"Great. The Kingsland and McGill crypts are clean. They're holed up under the Patterson one."

"Where you found the formaldehyde the first time."

"That's the one. They've dug a tunnel down into the lower level and given themselves an escape route too…"

Dean trailed off. Sam had a pretty good idea why.

"Dean?" he asked carefully. "You're sure it's a nest?"

"Oh, yeah," Dean said firmly. "They've been…storing kills there."

Sam closed his eyes. "Crap."

"Doesn't even begin to cover it," Dean muttered. "I found what's left of Joe Barton down there. And the missing parts of Kate. Most of them. And I really don't want to think about it. I'll swing by after seeing the doc."

Dean hung up and Sam did the same. He stared at his phone for moment before shoving it back in his pocket and pouring his coffee.

* * *

One of Evie's clearest and earliest memories was the first time she bent a spoon and shown it to her mother.

The next time she'd done it, her mother had watched, and the months after that were a blur of doctors' offices and waiting rooms, and hushed arguments in familiar antiseptic scented hallways.

One of the most frightening was her first MRI.

She remembered being alone in the room with the weird, feels-like-I'm-peeing-but-not sensation of the contrast in her veins. She'd cried when they'd put the IV line in and then again when Mom said she had to stay in there by herself, on the narrow bed with the big white machine that clicked and beeped and _whomped_ when they turned it on. Hospital lights had never seemed so strange and threatening then, or oddly twisted by the shape of the MR machine, which she'd thought looked like something out of the old Star Trek reruns that Grandpa watched on weekends.

When her mother told her she had to lie still and do what the doctors told her over the intercom thing, she'd kept right on crying and then gotten angry.

Five minutes later a light fixture had popped and gone dead.

They'd shut down the MR and her mother had come and got her, eyes very blue in her oddly white face.

Evie hadn't cared; she'd just wanted to be hugged.

To date, it was still one of her most frightening experiences…although that was quickly changing.

She woke to find Sam and Dean gone, and the room dark. The clock on the wall told her it was just past three AM. The grate missing from the vent in the ceiling told her she was in trouble.

When she turned her head the scent of formaldehyde filled her nostrils. Her mother – no, the thing wearing her face – smiled at her, its eyes freakishly blue in its white, white face.

"Hi, sweetie," it crooned, calmly pressing the needle of the syringe into her IV line. "Miss me?"

* * *

AN2: Swear to God I won't take as long with the next one (crossed heart)


	11. Ten: Trembling Hands

**Ten: Trembling Hands**

Despite the late hour, you'd think there'd be someone lurking about in a hospital's morgue keeping all the stiffs company. It wasn't a job Dean would wish on anyone, but still; cadaver theft, anyone?

Shrugging, he made his way to the central autopsy room, peering cautiously round corners as he went.

"Doctor Fraiser?"

Nuthin'.

"Yo, Doc!"

The hallway echoed satisfyingly, but there was no response. For one terrible second, he thought he saw a shadow flash past an adjacent corridor…but it was only the light and shadow refracting in the water of a cooler. Rolling his eyes, he tucked his gun back into the back of his jeans and headed into morgue itself.

"Paging Doctor Carson Fraiser," he muttered, peering around.

It was cool in here, as expected, and the lights overhead were the spots and lines of harsh brilliance found in every other mortuary across the country. Someone must have just left here though, because despite the place looking and feeling deserted, there was a body out of its draw and laid out on the slab and covered with a sheet.

Dean frowned. He'd seen bodies under sheets a number times, hard not to in this line of work, and he knew what one looking like when it was on a slab ready for a doctor go to work on. This one looked…wrong. Almost as though…

He approached cautiously, one hand going for his gun again as the other slid back the sheet.

The air left his lungs as the bloodied face of Carson Fraiser looked back at him.

The man's eyes were half mast, his lips parted, perhaps in what had been surprise. There was blood on his left temple and in his dark hair. Some of it had leaked down his neck to stain the collar of his scrubs and lab coat, and all of it was probably from a head wound.

Dean took on short hurried footstep back and the light from the lamps overhead flooded over the dead man's face…

…causing his pupils to contract.

_Wait. What?_

Dead men's eyes didn't react to light…

_Fuck._

He felt it behind him before he heard it, but even as he drew the 1911 cold hands clamped down on his limbs and throat, shoving his head back. He gagged a the pressure, felt his eyes water in the blinding brilliance…felt the sting of the needle in his neck before everything went white and spilled away…

The last thing he heard was laughter that might have once belonged to Joe Barton.

* * *

Something was wrong.

Before, just after Stanford, when his abilities had been new and strange, one of them had been a telltale tingle up his spine that went off when the paranormal came out to play. He hadn't felt anything like it in over a year.

But this wasn't a tingle so much as his sixth sense using his spinal cord as a bowstring.

The sensation was physical enough to draw him sharply upright and send him jogging the rest of the way back to Evie's room, coffee forgotten. He nearly ran over the candy-striper exiting the room, basket of books in hand.

"Sorry," he muttered, slipping past her into the room…

To be confronted with a space where Evie's bed should be.

His stomach dropped, and dropped hard. This could not be happening.

He darted out again and caught up to the candy-striper.

"Hey!"

She turned and looked at him. Sam realized she was probably no older than Evie, maybe a little younger.

"Can I help you?"

"Uh, yeah. Look, the girl who was in there, first bed on the left…do you know where she is?"

The girl nodded. "Yeah, a nurse wheeled her out a few minutes ago. Probably for some procedure or something. She looked pretty out of it."

Sam frowned. "The nurse?"

"The patient," the candy-striper corrected, misreading the question and giving him that scornful look that all teens seem to know instinctively.

Sam was not amused. "No. What was the _nurse_ like? Did you know her? Where she might have taken her?"

The girl flushed. "Oh. Um. No. I – I didn't know her. Uh…she was blonde, though, taller than me. Um…wearing scrubs so she must have been an ER nurse, or burns unit…or um, surgical. Everyone else mostly wears uniforms."

Sam nodded. "Okay, great. Did you see her name tag?"

She swung her basket a little, frowning thoughtfully. "Yeah, K. something. Mills, Miles?"

_Oh. God. No._

"Milligan," Sam breathed.

The candy-striper snapped her fingers. "That's the one!" She yelped when Sam grabbed her shoulders.

"This is very important," he said, using the low, intense voice that could get information out of a stone. "Did she say anything – _anything_ – about where she was taking the patient?"

* * *

Dean woke to a thrumming headache and cramping shoulders. Even before he opened them light bleed harsh and loud into his eyes. He tried to pull away, and the nerve-endings around his wrists sang angrily. They were bound above him, he realized, shackled to a wall…

No, he thought, as a handle jabbed his lower back, not a wall, a set of cabinets…draws...

The light bled away, letting him see…the morgue. They were still in the morgue. So he was bound to…mortuary draws. And with his own handcuffs, too, the ones he always carried like the good fake agent he was.

Just frigging peachy.

"The mighty hunter wakes," a male voice announced and the face that had once belonged to Joe Barton dropped into view. The thing was crouching down to look at him, safely our of reach of his legs, which was smart because Dean would have liked nothing better at that point that to kick it in its smug, ugly face.

"Get the fuck out of my face," he growled through gritted teeth.

The thing snorted softly. "Mouthy," it observed, "like the rest of your breed."

"Yeah? Well you smell like the bottom of a dumpster – like the rest of your filthy breed." He would have spat if his mouth hadn't felt like it was full of cotton. An after affect from the drug, he told himself, nothing to do with fear.

It narrowed its eyes at him, bared its teeth in a foul grin. A wet, aggressive gurgle sounded in its chest – either a growl or something inside beginning to liquefy. For a moment Dean thought it was going to launch forward and rip his face off with those hideously abused teeth, but another shape stepped into view.

"Come away, brother," said the face formerly known as Kate Milligan. "He's got things to see before we deal to him." She smiled, and it was awful.

Then she drew the sheet back from the slab behind her, and it was worse.

Evie.

Pale, ragged, chest rising with each breath, slow and rough, slow and rough, over and over and thank God she wasn't dead.

He noticed her IV lure was still in, the bandages still on her leg and only a little bloodied.

Her face was tilted towards him. When his eyes focused a little more, he saw hers were open, just faint, glistening slits of black and white and green, but they were open. She was awake, at least a little bit.

"Evie," he shouted. "Evie!"

He saw her hand twitch, fingers convulsing. Her jaw moved minutely as she said his name so softly he couldn't hear it, barely a whisper into cool mortuary air.

The female ghoul chuckled. "Quite the cuckoo's egg, isn't she?" She ghosted pallid fingers through Evie's hair. "And to think, we would have torn her to shreds without ever knowing she had siblings. More Winchester spawn to play with."

Dean snarled, cursing the air blue.

"Oh, sweetie, unwad your boxers, please. This is only fair you know." The jovial tone dropped out of its voice, face falling into cold, savage lines. "Your daddy ripped ours into just as many pieces."

"He was our world and you just killed him!" the other put in, teeth still bared and catching the harsh light. "We lost everything. What gives you the right? Huh? What gives you the right to do that to us? Before your father showed up we never killed anyone –"

"No," Dean sneered, "you just stole their faces, their bodies, their last memories. What possible harm could that be?"

"It's not like they were using them," the female said softly, face full of knife-edge danger.

"No, but it gives you the means to use others, doesn't it? And you would, if we gave you the chance."

"Mmm, just like your father gave us the chance…when he failed to warn his whore and his whelp about the bad things that go _bump_."

It slapped its palm down on the slab, just in front of Evie's face, and he saw her flinch, hand fully convulsing at her side. He strained against his cuffs and felt blood smear on his wrists –

* * *

Sam nearly careened into a wall, his head on fire and images playing fast and furious over the backs of his eyes.

_Evie on the ceiling_ – no, no, on a table, on a metal table – _fire spilling around her_ – not fire, it was shattered glass – _reaching out to him_ – but it wasn't him she was reaching for, her face filled with fear and rage – _"SAM, NO!"_ – only it was Dean crying out, struggling with his wrists bound above him the handle of a mortuary cabinet…

"EVIE! NO!"

Mortuary. They were in the morgue.

He picked himself up, ignoring the startled cries of the passing hospital staff, and ran as fast as his feet would carry him.

* * *

– one long line of it finding its way past his shirt cuff and down his arm. So close he could smell it.

The female was smiling again.

"Wanna know something cute?"

It ran a hand through Evie's hair again, and Dean saw her begin to tremble.

"You know what you're damn daddy used to call this one? His little illegitimate bitch-child? Hmm? Guess what Papa Winchester called her."

Dean glowered at her in resentful silence, and the thing's malicious grin widened.

"'_Baby bear'_," it said with relish. "He called her 'baby bear', would you believe. And no wonder, huh? Dean runs too hot, and Sammy too cold, but little Evie, oh no, she's just right."

"Not true." Evie's voice was barely a breath and half-strangled, but he heard her. "'s not true. Dean."

"Why do you think he never told you?" the male added. "Couldn't have big brother getting J-E-A-L-O-U-S…"

"No," Evie whispered, "no, Dean…Dean…"

The ghouls were laughing, the sound thick and hard and mocking. "But then, maybe you won't mind so much when we get started."

(Unnoticed, a scalpel began to rock on an instrument tray.)

"When we cut her up."

The female grabbed a hunk of Evie's hair, wrenched her head back to expose her throat. The male drew a bowie knife – the one Dean usually kept holstered under his shirt – and advanced. One of the lights flickered overhead. Dean's heart stampeded in his chest.

"When we chew her up and take her form."

(The scalpel rocked faster. The IV line twisted.)

"When we eat you alive…"

The knife made contact with Evie's throat.

Dean roared, "EVIE! NO!"

"…when we go after Sam…"

Evie's gaze changed; eyes opened wide, sharp, alert. Bright green.

"Fuck you," she spat.

Several things happened at once. Every glass surface shattered, tinkling shards exploding from all sides. With the windows in the double doors gone Dean could heard his name being yelled and the sound of familiar footfalls.

When he looked back, it was to see both ghouls flung away from the slab. Evie sat up, pale face aflame with rage and power. The male tried to come back at her with the bowie…Dean struggled against his cuffs…

Only for Evie to lift one hand and send the ghoul back again, carried on a wave of invisible force into the wall of cabinets where Dean was bound. Its body hit with a sickening crunch, bones snapping in a bag of meat. Her gaze turned on Dean, and he fought the urge to flinch…but all that happened was his cuff's seizing once before ripping themselves open.

The female was staggering to its feet, staring in abject horror at Dean's little sister.

"No," it breathed, "no, I drugged you; you were out, helpless…"

"And you think I'm stupid enough not to choke the line?" Evie said, slipping from the slab to land lightly on her bare feet. "Please."

Behind her, the instruments on the slab that had evidently been meant for her torture hovered at the ready over her shoulders. Crushed glass rose in small dervishes as she limbed towards the thing. She ripped the lure from her hand as the IV line tightened, ignoring the blood that pattered to the floor.

"Evie," Dean managed, feeling the blood running back into his arms.

"You won't kill me," the female rasped. "I'm all that's left of your mother."

Evie seethed. "You _ate_ all that was left of my mother. You ripped her to pieces!"

The glass shushed and tinkled as it rose in a glittering uneven veil. Hooks, scalpels, stainless steel things Dean couldn't identify angled for the attack.

"I should rip you to pieces," Evie snarled.

"You first."

The male had leapt to its feet and hurtled across the room. Dean staggered to his feet for the intercept…

Sam rocketed through the double doors like he was on skates and collided with the thing. Dean saw the knife go into his brother's shoulder. He let out a yell of pain and Evie turned to look, eyes wide.

The female was up in an instant; seconds before Dean could grab it, it shoved Evie hard, sending her skidding across the floor gathering glass fragments as she went and fetching up against the doors. Then it was on him, bestial snarling in his face, and its foul breath on his skin.

He faintly heard Evie gasp and cough.

She called his name and Sam's.

There was a yelp and thud and a gasp of relief from his brother.

And then the female was ripped off him, and thrown hard up against a bare wall, pinned by a myriad of medical tools. It hung there, screaming abuse.

Dean rolled over, glass falling from his back and shoulders to see Evie crouch like some enraged feral creature where she had landed. Her hair was a mess, and she peered through it at the ghoul on the wall, filled with hate. There was blood smeared on her limbs and glass shining on her hospital smock.

"Evie, don't," he heard Sam say, breathless. "Don't…"

Evie ignored him, her focus absolute. She rose to her feet in one smooth movement, the veil of glass rising with her. Her right hand came up, fingers splayed, the glass shifting in sync and ringing like bells.

"No!" the ghoul screamed, thrashing. "_No_!"

Evie's face twisted. Her fist closed. The glass rushed forwards and there was a sound like a watermelon hitting concrete.

The ghoul's head was gone, and one end of the room was painted roughly with red.

Evie's chest rose and fell in quick, short movements. There was blood running from her nose over her lower lip. Her face drained of all remaining colour…and then without preamble, her eyes rolled back in her head and she folded like wet paper to the floor.

* * *

**AN:** So...that happened. Evie's out of the closet, one ghoul is dead and only God and me know how the boys are gonna react. Review if ye be jammy!


	12. Eleven: Damascus Way

**AN:** Christ, oh my god, I can't even tell you all how SORRY I am that it took me this long to finish this damn fic. Good lord.

Speaking of, the completion of this chapter was not, bizarrely, due to repetitions of the song that originally inspired it and named all its chapters. You owe all your reviews to Mumford & Sons for making _After The Storm_, which actually inspired the second half of this chapter. I strongly sugest listening to it when you get to...well...I think you'll know.

Anyway, onwards.

* * *

**Eleven: Damascus Way**

There were no words.

There were just no words to describe what had just happened. To describe what it implied…

"Fuck," Dean wheezed.

Well, there was that word. Which pretty much covered all their bases, really. And it was the only one he could think of.

He levered himself upwards, still fighting off shock and the backlash from whatever those utter, _utter_ fuckers had dosed him with. Sam was already up and carefully lifting Evie from where she had fallen.

The look on Sam's face was awful; crumpled and heartsick, like someone had stabbed him, or someone he cared about had been stabbed in front of him. For one terrible moment Dean thought his brother might lose it and start to cry.

Although all things considered he wouldn't hold it against anyone to shed a few tears.

He'd just struggled to his feet when there was a dull **boom** from across the room. Both he and Sam started, Sam's arms tightening on their little sister. Dean retrieved his gun and –

**Boom.**

_Shit!_

"Goddamn it," he snarled, "what is that?"

**Boom** – and one of the mortuary cabinet's steel doors rattled on its much-abused hinges.

Dean exchanged a look with Sam then slid the safety off the 1911 and made his way quietly to the cabinet. He held his gun at the ready and mouthed, "One, two, thr –"

"Help," said a familiar voice from the other side of the steel door.

This time, the look he and Sam exchanged was wide-eyed.

Dean hurriedly opened the cabinet door and slid the tray out.

Lying there, limp and exhausted, was Doctor Carson Beckett.

"Doc?" Dean said blankly, staring at the man.

"Are they gone?" asked the doctor. Dean realized the man's knuckles were bloodied… and that there were red smears on the inside of the cabinet door. The man had broken the skin of both hands making noise enough to be noticed and let out.

"Uh, yeah. One got…"

He glanced back at his brother, who still kneeling on the floor, had that cut-up look on his face and Evie cradled in his arms, her head on his shoulder. The doctor followed his gaze, eyes widening.

The distinct, singular noise of liquid hitting tile fell into the pooling silence. All three men looked in its direction, and Carson Fraiser went pale.

Blood and thicker things were leaking from the female ghoul's body where it remained pinned to the mortuary wall. Fluid rained in a kind of viscous slow motion from the tips of its rictused fingers and the instruments that pinned it there.

Dean cleared his throat and tried again to explain.

He managed to. Sort of.

"One got…well, that. The other is…"

…nowhere to be seen.

"Damn it," Dean growled.

* * *

Evie dreamed.

At first it was a memory – the diner she and Dad had stopped at on the way home from the concert; one of those places you see in TV shows or in truck stops and little towns that remember the 70's a little more vividly than everywhere else.

The walls were lined with booths cushioned in green vinyl with tables topped in cream Formica. Memorabilia dating back to the 50's was scattered over the walls; framed posters and album covers, black and white photos filled with high drama.

Her bracelet was still there of course. Complete with all the charms she remembered. She turned to the window and, catching her refection, found she was eighteen instead of fourteen again…

"Hey, Baby Bear."

She turned back to him, matching his smile. He was sitting sideways along his side of the booth, which was narrow enough that she could comfortably rest her bare feet in his lap. One warm hand was on her ankle, a reassuring reminder.

"Yeah, Dad?"

John Winchester grinned at his youngest child.

"Kiddo," he said, voice just how she remembered, all warm and smooth with the long open vowels that verged on Southern. "For a second there you looked like you'd seen a ghost."

She her smile got a little wider, but sadder too. "I'm looking at one right now," she told him comfortably. "I'm dreaming, Dad."

"Gives us a chance to talk, though."

She decided to humour him. After all, debating the validity of dream conversations with him would basically be like arguing with another part of her own brain.

Evie nodded. "I met my brothers."

John smiled, light catching in his hair and suddenly reminding her of Dean. "You like them," he said, quietly happy.

"I do," she agreed, "They remind me of you, you know. Dean looks like you, listens to your music, wears you coat…but I get the feeling Sam's the one who really takes after you."

"Yeah?" He was watching her carefully; searching her face for hidden clues. For answers.

"Yeah. He's driven, so focused." She looked away for a moment, touched the charms on her bracelet. "I never noticed you were like that until I saw it in Sam." She looked back up at him. "I think it's because I could never figure out what you were so focused on."

John gazed at her, deeply sad. "When I was with you, you were the be-all and end-all for me. When I was with you, Evie, you were all I could focus on."

She swallowed hard. "And when you went away?"

He shook his head, smiling a little brokenly. "Time to go, Baby Bear. Time to go back."

Somewhere, someone was saying her name.

* * *

"Baby Bear," he said, voice low and smooth and with those long, drawn out vowels that she remembered so well… "Baby Bear, come on, it's time to wake up."

"Daddy?" she breathed, eyes still closed.

The warm hand holding hers tightened fractionally. There was a rough drawn in breath and then he said, "No. No, Baby Bear, it's me. It's Dean."

Dean.

_Dean._

Her eyes opened reflexively, the light harsh enough to silhouette him for a moment…but when it dimmed as her eyes cleared…

There he was.

Dean was watching her anxiously, face full of fatigue and a kind of resignation that ate at her heart like acid. But he smiled at her when she breathed his name and gently brushed her hair back from her face with the hand that wasn't holding hers.

She was lying on a hospital bed – not the one from her ward, though, and the room they were in was an unfamiliar single. Her graft ached, but if felt like there was a new bandage on it. Her IV was hooked up again and there was a blanket tucked around her. Dean was in a chair beside the bed, and she could see the bandages on his wrists, bruises showing around the edges and already going deep purple. There were bloodstains on his shirt, around the sleeves, and he looked so tired…

"Where are we? Where's Sam?" she rasped.

"We're in a secure ward. Sam's with Doc Fraiser in the ER getting checked out," he said, voice deceptively mild. "Evie…"

She swallowed, her throat dry. "I know. I – I know I should have told you, but…"

"But?"

She couldn't meet his eyes anymore, looking down at their clasped hands instead. "I was scared, Dean."

She heard a second sharp intake of breath. "Scared of what?"

Evie couldn't seem to bring herself to speak above a murmur, and her throat hurt. Her eyes felt hot. She realized that she was about to tell this man – _her brother_ – who she'd known a grand total of three days something that she'd never even told her mother.

"Of being different. Of being a freak. Of…of being found out and being hurt for it. Or used." She drew a shuddering breath and fought the tears. "I…It all started when I was four – I bent one of my mother's silver spoons, after I saw something like it on TV – and after that it was test after test after _test_. I'd been through twenty-two MRIs by the time I turned five. Mom was terrified, going out of her mind trying to figure out what was _wrong_ with me. The only reason she stayed as calm as she did was my grandpa, but…"

She faltered, breath hitching as she pictured Adam Milligan's face, lined with age and scarred from his time in an RAF cockpit, but warm and solid and strong. If she'd have been a boy, she would have been named after him.

"But he died," Dean finished for her.

She nodded. "Even before then I'd started lying to her about it. I was getting stronger, but I made out like it was fading, like it was going away. I don't know if she believed me or just wanted to believe." A tiny, faintly hysterical laugh found its way out of her mouth. "I just didn't want her to be afraid of me."

Then the tears started pouring down her cheeks in earnest, and Evie was furious with herself for crying – _again_ – but couldn't seem to stop them. She crushed her eyes closed and tried to press her face into the pillow.

"Ah, Christ," she heard Dean say, then the bed dipped and she was wrapped up in his arms again.

She really, really lost it then; clinging to him and burying her face in his shoulder and just letting go, sobs pulled out her like poison lanced from a wound. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," kept pouring out of her mouth like a chant, and Dean held her a little tighter and pressed his face to her hair.

"You don't have to be sorry, Evie," he murmured, and it just killed her because he'd never sounded so much like Dad. "It's over now, Baby Bear. Everything's going to be fine, I promise."

From under wet lashes, she caught a glimpse of Sam standing in the doorway, watching them with heartbroken eyes. She saw the look that passed between her brothers, and wished that Dean were right.

* * *

"Ready?"

"…ready."

"Okay. One, two…"

Both men shoved hard and the ghoul's body – wrapped in a bloodied sheet – fell with a _whump_ and a flurry of rising sparks into the mouth of the incinerator. They straightened, watching as it shriveled unnaturally fast under the touch of fiery fingers.

A draft stirred the heavy air, raising goosebumps on Dean's neck. He didn't like it down here in the hospital's subbasement; the half-darkness of it, lit by faltering halogen lamps and the flickering flames from the incinerator, reminded him of other dark places. Places defined by pain. Places he'd rather forget.

Beside him, Carson Fraiser stirred, a frown drawing down his handsome features.

"What'll happen now?" he asked, voice low and somber.

Dean looked up, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. He felt like he'd been put through the ringer, his body one big bruise.

"Now, we wait for my back up to arrive and find the fucker that got way," he said without preamble.

Carson frowned. "How? You said those…_things_…were hard to track. Even for you. How will you find it?"

"We know where they were holing up," Dean said, sighing as he remembered Kate Milligan's face, rictused with terror. "Me and Bobby'll deal with it, then let the cops deal with the…with the bodies."

Carson looked ill, and it struck Dean as a little funny that scrubbing gore from a morgue didn't bother the surgeon, but the idea of dismembered corpses…

…yeah, okay, not that funny.

"You do this a lot, don't you?" the doctor said softly, and Dean looked up at him.

"This is _all_ I do, dude."

"So you're not… I feel like an idiot for asking, but you're not really a federal agent?"

Dean slowly shook his head. "Still hunt bad guys though."

He watched the doctor digest this for a moment. "Well," he said after a while. "I suppose that's what matters."

Dean raised one eyebrow, a little incredulous. "No offence, Doc, but you're taking all this really well. I mean usually when people find out monsters are real there's a little more hysteria involved."

Carson careful sort of smile. "I'm not," he said. "Coping, I mean. I'm putting it on hold. It's something I learned to do as an intern; be practical now, fall apart later."

"…later?"

Carson shrugged, looking tired and this time his smile was rueful. "At the funeral, I imagine."

_Oh._

"Will you be there?" he continued.

Dean paused, then nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, we will."

* * *

"A damn fine mess," Bobby muttered.

He'd arrived half an hour ago during the hubbub of the morning shift change, having driven through the night after getting a frantic phone call from Sam. The attack had prompted him to hand his own case over to Rufus and get to Windom ASAP.

Now, he stood outside Evie Milligan's room while her eldest brother wearily filled him in on the situation. Through the small window in the door, he could see Sam, all ten-thousand feet of him, sprawled in a plastic hospital chair next to the girl's bed, one hand holding hers while he listlessly checked his phone with the other.

It was a measure of how over this case Dean was that he simply nodded at Bobby's words. "When do you want to head out and get this thing?"

"After twelve hours of shut-eye?"

Dean snorted. "I wish."

Bobby nodded. "We'll wait for sun-up; catch it when it least expects to be caught." He clapped Dean on the shoulder and steered him to the family room where the younger hunter had set up camp. "C'mon, kiddo. Show me where this thing's resting up and we'll put a trap together."

* * *

The end, when it came, was rather anti-climatic.

The trap was relatively simple, but effective. Bobby had brought his new dog with him – a huge, ugly Labrador-Staffordshire Terrier cross with a yellow coat, lopsided ears and a grin like a Great White – which he'd bought from a hunter in Oregon.

"Breeds 'em special," Bobby said, rubbing the beast's raggedy ears. "Trains 'em for our kind of hunting. You want a dog that ain't gonna flinch when it smells monsters, this is the kind you want."

Dean regarded the dog doubtfully. "What's his name?"

"Sharky."

Hearing his name, the dog looked up and grinned that terrible grin.

"Figures," said Dean.

While Bobby took Sharky to the crypt and sent him down the tunnel, Dean loaded the double-barrel shotgun with regular buckshot and settled against a nearby headstone. The elder hunter emerged from the crypt a moment later, his own sawn-off resting in the crook of his arm, and together they waited.

It didn't take long.

Not even five minutes later they could hear raucous barking and snarling from below them, the sound filtering up through the den's ceiling. There were human-sounding yelps of fear and pain before a pale, dirt-streaked hand burst from that thin patch of earth. They watched it flail about looking for purchase, eventually clinging to a knot of grass roots and hauling the rest of itself out of the escape tunnel. Earth crumbled away, widening the tunnel mouth; they could hear it hitting the den's floor below and Sharky's furious barking as his quarry escaped him.

They waited as the ghoul clawed its way, gasping, to the surface. Head, shoulders, hips…

It wriggled around, and just before its eyes found them, Dean took the shot. The _crack_ of the double barrels going off seemed shockingly loud in the early morning quiet. A handful of birds scattered into the pale sky, rising like blown leaves from the old yew trees.

At such close range there was very little left of what had been Joe Barton's face. The body wavered, before its arms collapsed and the whole thing slipped back down through the den's ceiling and landed with a wet thud.

Sharky, who had ceased barking after the shot, began baying excitedly for Bobby to come and see what he'd caught.

* * *

Sam's phone was going, Dean's name flashing on the screen.

"Dean?"

Evie looked up at him from her book, expression questioning.

"It's done. Tell Evie it's done."

Something in his face must have given it away, because Evie's eyes immediately welled, and Sam settled on the side of her bed and smiled into her hair when she folded into his arms.

* * *

Three days later, she woke late in the morning and panicked for moment as the light slanted across her face.

Then she heard Denise's kitten heels on the linoleum and her murmuring with Sam in the hallway. They were in her room a second later, Denise bearing a drycleaners bag and a backpack. Sam was pushing a wheelchair.

"Time to go?" she murmured.

"Yeah," Sam said softly. "I'll let you get ready."

He turned, slipping out of the door and casting one last worried look over his shoulder.

Evie watched him go, then levered herself upwards and let Denise help her out of bed. She had a sponge bath, and sat in a chair beside the bathroom basin while Denise washed and blow-dried her hair. She put on the dress she wore to her first charity dinner, and the black flats she wore to her university interview, and twisted her hair up with the hairpins her mother had worn to Granddad's funeral…

Then she put her charm bracelet back on, and it was the sound of the silver chiming that broke her for the first time that morning.

* * *

The church was small, but crowded. There were lilies, white and green, strewn across the casket at the front, and a woman Denise had said was Kate's boss had put one in Evie's hand as they'd entered the church. Evie had a deathgrip on it, her face distant and fragile.

Music was playing softly, a song Dean didn't know, while at the front of the church a projector poured pictures from Kate Milligan's life across a screen; a laughing baby, a bright-eyed child, a lively teenager, a graceful woman. A mother, gaze full of love and secrets, her arms always around her green-eyed daughter.

When the slide show got through its first rotation there was a pause and then a video clip started, the sound wound down to nothing so there was only that unfamiliar song playing while on the screen…

It was their father.

Dean inhaled hard and sharp. It had been so long since he'd seen his dad like that outside of memory; living, drawing breath. Happy.

John was in the Impala, with Evie in the driver's seat. It was summer, both of them laughing at something as the camera came towards them. The lens looked through the open driver's side window and then moved too quickly as it was passed to John, turned, and there was Kate, leaning against the driver's door and sharing some joke with her then fourteen-year-old daughter. They were bathed in sunlight and Kate's resemblance to Mary was uncanny.

_No wonder_, Dean thought again, _no goddamn wonder…_

He heard a soft chime beside him, and saw Evie staring at the video clip, the hand that wasn't holding the lily touching the charm bracelet, pressing her thumb against the tiny silver Impala.

The service began then, and Dean listened to the eulogies made by people he'd never heard of for a woman he'd never met, and kept one arm around Evie the entire time.

When it got to be Evie's turn… Dean wished to an uninterested God that it wasn't. It was cruel, making people – grieving people – get up there and say good things they were never going to have again about a person they would never get to be with again. But she got up, and through her tears, she spoke:

"I asked someone if it gets easier."

She met Dean's eyes and he held her gaze.

"He didn't answer for a moment, but then told me you learn to deal with it better and better each day…"

* * *

"_Right now, I don't know how I'm going to do that…"_

The service came to an end, and they rose as one, Dean lifting Evie into his arms as Sam moved to the casket with Carson and the other pallbearers.

Kate began her last journey.

"_How do you even begin to deal with losing the one constant in your life? How do you find a way through that?"_

* * *

"_How do get used to losing all those things that she brought into the world, all those little points of brightness. How do I…how do I wake up each morning and remember all over again that she's not waiting downstairs?"_

The casket they lower into the ground was filled with sand, just enough to give its weight the illusion of a body.

Evie still flinched when the first shovel of dirt hit its lid. Denise began to sing Amazing Grace, and Evie put her face into Dean's neck, breathing through the tears.

Just when she'd thought she'd run out…

"_How walk down those stairs and remember again and again every beautiful moment that I'm missing? Because there were so many beautiful moments…"_

* * *

"_Mom was…she was one of the world's best people. She had this way of finding a path through troubles. The light at the end of the tunnel was never an oncoming train. I took it for granted, just like everyone does, but she was always there for me, even when I was being a brat."_

Carson was at the edge of the woods, waiting for them with Bobby who stood with Sharky at his feet. The dog was silent, his trademark grin missing as though he understood the gravity of the situation.

Sam sat on the Impala's hood with Evie while Dean, Bobby and Carson built the pyre and carefully laid Kate's remains, swathed in dark blue sheets upon its top. The salt sounded like rain as it pattered over the linen and wood. They covered it with gasoline and fragrant oils.

Dean held a matchbook out to Evie. She struck the matches and they sprang to shining life like a star being born. Cupping one hand around the flame, she released the matchbook and it hung in the air over her palms; a manmade firefly that lifted free of her hands and glided over to the pyre. It came to rest there…

Tongues of funerary fire lit the trees.

Evie rested her cheek against Sam's shoulder, while he clasped her hands with one of his and clenched the other to keep it from shaking.

"_I'm scared of what's coming for me without Mom here to help me face it. Sometimes I don't know how I'm going to see a way through things without her there to guide me…"_

* * *

"_But I do know that I'll get there. I don't know how, but…but I know she was a great person and she raised me to be the same. I have to live up to that. I'm going to."_

Evie was asleep, finally cried out and able to rest in her own bed as long as her brothers were there.

Dean stood in the doorway of her bedroom, watching her breathe just to know that she was real. That it was over for her. Her monsters were gone. She was safe.

He took the picture from his pocket, the one of Evie and their dad sitting on the hood of the Impala, smiling like the sun that bathed them.

He closed his eyes, rubbed the unfallen tears away and took a deep breath.

If nothing else…if nothing they would fix the world so there would be no more monsters for Evie.

"_I'm going to get up in the morning and go downstairs and remember all the wonderful things that Mom and I did together. I'm going to remember her making pancakes on Sundays and going driving with me and granddad, and the face she used to make when Dad visited and tried to get her to put bacon grease in the pancakes…"_

* * *

"_I'm going to remember when she'd take me to the park after her shift even though she was tired. I'm going to remember the days she picked me up from school and took me shopping, or helped me on a project, or sat with me while I opened my scholarship letter…"_

They spent the next few days helping pack up the house while Evie put together enough for a week away from home.

"You're sure about this?" Dean said. "I mean, you hardly know Bobby…hell, you hardly know us, kid."

Evie looked up from folding a cardigan of her mother's, tucking it into her suitcase.

"I know enough," she murmured, then shook her head. "I can't…I can't stay here by myself."

Dean took a breath. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

"Carson said I can travel if I'm careful," she added, "and my graft's healing faster than expected, so."

Dean smiled, kissed her forehead. "I know, Baby Bear. I know."

"_I'm going to remember her jokes and her laugh and her smile and the way she sang when she thought no one was listening."_

* * *

"_I'm going to remember what she told me, about how when she lost a patient, she always told herself they were going somewhere better."_

Evie hugged Denise goodbye, put Windom in the Impala's review mirror and didn't look back.

She fell asleep halfway to Sioux Falls with sunlight on her face, and dreamed…

"_And I know, now…I know there must be somewhere better, even if it's just out of fairness…because of all people, Mom deserves somewhere better. Somewhere as beautiful as she was…"_

* * *

Kate woke with the sun on her skin, filtering though her bedroom window. The sheets still smelt of John…

She smiled and got up, wrapping herself in her favourite dressing gown and padding downstairs towards the sound of Evie chattering away to her father and the scrape of pans over the burners; Evie was teaching John how to make pancakes.

Kate's father was sitting at the kitchen table with a newspaper, watching them over his teacup and trading jokes with…

"Morning, mom," Adam said, smiling sleepily at her.

Kate smiled back, kissing her son's forehead before going and doing the same to Evie. John gave her quick morning kiss, mouth still minty with familiar toothpaste and murmured, "So, how's your morning going?"

She kissed him again and murmured back, "Heavenly…"

**THE END**

* * *

**AN2:** And clearly, CLEARLY, there are going to be sequels, although they will be one-shots because starting another chapter fic of this size (very nearly 30,000 words what the fuck) might actually kill me; it's my final year of university and I'm so busy I can't even tell you.

BUT, THERE WILL BE SEQUELS. HONEST.

Love and kisses,

Stranger.


End file.
